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BY ROGER L. SERGEL 

, .. ■ M 


ARLIE GELS TON 



NEW YORK B. W. HUEBSCH, INC. MCMXXIII 




COPYRIGHT, 19 2 3, BY 
B. W. HUEBSCH, INC. 


PRINTED IN U. 




jL 


To 

RUTH 










I 

II 

III 

IV 
V 

VI 

VII 

VIII 

IX 

X 

XI 


XII 

XIII 

XIV 
XV 

XVI 

XVII 

XVIII 

XIX 

XX 


XXI 

XXII 

XXIII 

XXIV 
XXV 

XXVI 

XXVII 

XXVIII 


CONTENTS 

PART ONE 

Home, 3 

Depot and Movies, 20 

The Fourth, 30 

Moving Horizon, 46 

August, 56 

Grendel, 67 

Cause and Effect, 83 

The Knowledge of Time, 95 

Winter Growth, 115 

Where Two or Three Are Gathered, 138 
The Old Wives’ Tale, 160 

PART TWO 

Bright Valley, 179 
Orange Sticks, 197 
Finley, 210 

The Turn of the Wheel, 224 

Background, 236 

Duration, 255 

Somers, 266 

Infidelity, 282 

Triangle, 291 


PART THREE 

Ideas, 299 

The New Isis, 314 

Sublimation, 328 

Without Stint or Limit, 346 

The Wife, 361 

Mat, 379 

Solitaire, 388 

Provincial, 400 



PART ONE 




CHAPTER I 


HOME 

I 

Iron in hand, Mrs. Gelston paused to squint through the 
silvery distortion of the kitchen window. Rain had been 
falling all night and all the long forenoon, bogging the 
roads, flushing gutters, and spreading in thin pools over 
the streets. The rain had fallen until now its slant stri- 
ation was a faintly permanent grain of the near houses 
and of the distant red and slate-gray buildings of Main 
Street, standing three blocks distant beyond a length of 
soaked garden and pasture. As Mrs. Gelston made out 
the figure of some one walking down the cement walk at 
the pasture’s edge her bleached face broke into wrinkles 
concentric about her spectacles and weak mouth; then, as 
the figure grew definite and she saw that it was a youth 
encased in a familiar raincoat, the larger wrinkles disap¬ 
peared, leaving the many traces of easy and shallow emo¬ 
tions—a face of unhealthy vacuity relieved by eyes of a 
startling animal blue. “Sure, that’s Phil,” she muttered, 
and stepped back to the ironing board. 

The rain was still touching the window and the pane 
in the back door; and through these openings unshadow¬ 
ing light fell on a greasy confusion—the worktable with 
its unwashed dishes; the range with pots and kettles 
shoved to one side to make room for the flatirons; the 
cupboard with doors opened upon top-heavily piled cups 

[ 3 ] 


and plates, broken biscuits, and mice tracks. By one pile 
of dishes lay an unset trap. 

Occasionally Mrs. Gelston looked into the dining-room, 
where browning geranium plants sat on the window sill, 
and the oilcloth on the table held the eggy remains of a 
meal. An opposite door out of the dining-room framed 
a length of hall, in the farther end of which stared the 
kaleidoscopic pattern of the front, door glass—red, yel¬ 
low, and blue. Steps sounded on the porch, the door flew 
open, and the boy in the raincoat stamped his feet heavily 
as he slammed it shut. 

“That you, Phil ?” Mrs. Gelston inquired nasally. 

“Can’t you see?” As he brushed past the dining-room 
table, his coat flapped a protruding knife to the floor. 

“Now Phil, don’t you be impudent. I didn’t know but 
maybe it was your pa.” She hung a camisole over the 
back of a chair. 

“You mighta known. You ain’t heard Twenty-four 
come in, have you ? I thought not. And you never seen 
pa home before it come, did you ? And you can bet your 
life you won’t today, neither.” Phil flung his hat 
through the door at a dining-room chair, uncovering a 
head of nondescript hair over a convex face that held the 
opaque blue eyes of his mother. 

“Say, I gotta have something to eat. Pm hungry. 
What you got around this joint, anyway?” 

“Huh, you talk like you had to get back to school right 
away, or had a job or something. The sooner you get the 
idea we’re goin’ to have just three meals a day the better 
it’ll be for you. Now’t school’s out Pm going to have a 
vacation as well as you and Arlie. You can wait till pa 
comes home, and we’ll eat together, like a family should.” 
As Mrs. Gelston spoke her wrinkles augmented each 
other. 

Phil replied from the cupboard where he was rummag¬ 
ing through cans and jars: “I got to get back. Maybe I 

[ 4 ] 


have got a job. Anyway old Z. T. Morse told me to come 
in this afternoon.” 

“What, you working in a hardware store? What do 
you know about hardware?” 

“Much as I need to, prob’ly. Ain’t a fellow got to 
learn sometimef Come on now, ain’t we goin’ to eat?” 

“You just let me finish this bundle and I’ll get you 
something. Or call Arlie. Wait, though—I hate to take 
her from cleaning the upstairs rooms. No, go ahead; I 
ain’t heard her for an hour or more.” 

Going to the dining-room door he bawled: “Arlie, 
come on down and get me some dinner.” With hands on 
the jambs he waited for an answer; none came. Then, 
with rising petulance: “Arlie!” And when again the 
silence grew loud he turned disgustedly. “Aw, she ain’t 
there, ma.” 

“She is too,” his mother answered; “only she don’t 
want to hear. But I’m through now. I’ll get you some¬ 
thing myself. Won’t I give it to that girl though. She 
gets more irresponsible every day. You get some of that 
steak out of the ice-box, Phil.” 

Potatoes were sliced, and a pail of lard and a black¬ 
ened skillet produced. “Now Phil, you start the steak 
fryin’ and don’t use too much lard. I’m going to give 
that girl something worse’n the worst talking-to she ever 
got.” 

2 

Mrs. Gelston assisted her plump form up the stairs by 
clutching the thin banister, from which Arlie, in her tom¬ 
boy phase, and Philip, of right, had worn the varnish, 
giving it a subdued lustre. Ten years before, when Ar¬ 
lie had been nine and Philip seven, the Gelstons had 
bought the house, which was still mortgaged. At that 
time there had been plans for remodelling: a wall 

[ 5 ] 


knocked out, a newel post with a lamp, a bathroom. 
Oliver Gelston had owned a grocery store then, and such 
things had seemed possible. But put off from year to 
year the improvements became smoke and vanished when 
in 1907, caught with large debts, Oliver Gelston had been 
forced to sell at a loss. In the five years since that time 
he had done odd jobs of carpentry about the town, had 
worked as a section hand, and later, since he had had 
some experience as a telegrapher in his younger days, 
had become station agent at Coon Falls. The salary 
from such a position had allowed the carrying out of no 
dreams other than living as best one might, selling tick¬ 
ets, posting freight tariffs before the inspector arrived, 
and keeping in action a house and a family that merci¬ 
fully did not increase. 

But such a form of existence had dispersed any or¬ 
ganized plans of Mamie Gelston for advancement into 
that group which always makes its entity felt to those 
without it, however amorphous, at first glance, the democ¬ 
racy of the Iowa small town may seem. She had been 
forced into foggy attempts at economy of management by 
the growing demands of her children and the only slightly 
increased salary of her husband. The house, in its room¬ 
iness at least, had seemed too great a strain upon pocket- 
book and energies, and its unchanged, provoking solidity 
had rubbed her soul to a spotty rawness; though as the 
latter half of middle age closed upon her, the process of 
the home, the fitting of a desire to a place rather than a 
place to a desire, had partially wrought upon her its an¬ 
cient effect. For two or three years now she had com¬ 
plained but little of the house, turning rather to an of¬ 
fended adoration of her son, and to a febrile surveillance 
of her husband and daughter. 

It was not now a regard for discipline nor offense at 

[ 6 ] 


was 


work delayed that took her upstairs. Rather it 
the need of outlet for the petty bitternesses the morn- 
ing s grayly sibilant void had let grow within her. But 
strangely, the return of her son and the ascent through 
the moist dimness of the remotely lit stairway weakened 
the determination that had thumped the first step. 

3 

She paused in the upstairs hall and tucked into place 
a wisp of the yellow hair that, drawn thinly back to an 
unlovely knot, shone on her head as a polish. 

“Arlie,” she called, “where are you?” 

In the silence that followed she flung open the near¬ 
est door, disclosing the front bedroom, which had waited 
years for a guest who had never come, and wherein re¬ 
posed a cherry set, its warmth of color diminished by 
the guest room chill of the stiff white curtains and un¬ 
used dustiness of the commode. 

“Not cleaned yet,” she commented. “What on earth 
has that girl been doing? Arlie, where are you?” 
Down the hall she tramped to the back bedroom, where 
a door stood ajar, and stepped into the room. At last 
her eyes found a thin girl crouched in a corner between 
the wall and bed, some sheets of paper in her hand, un¬ 
restrained dark hair shadowing the flushed hollow cheeks 
of a narrow but evenly featured face, the nose high but 
fine. Her eyes, blue as the mother’s were not, with a 
soft mineral-like color, stared through the window. 

“Mooning!” Mrs. Gelston broke out. “Always 
mooning! Haven’t you got one grain of common sense? 
Here I send you upstairs to clean these rooms, and what 
you done? Nothing! You just set and set, and waste 

[7] 


the best part of the day, and here’s your brother got to 
get back to town right away or lose a good job, and 
now prob’ly he will lose it—just for lack of a dinner. 
But if I want to get you to help I got to chase upstairs 
after you, just to find you reading! What’s that stuff you 
got there? Let me see it.” 

The girl had not moved from her original position, 
though at the last words her eyes dropped to the sheets in 
her hands, which, after a moment’s contemplation, she 
handed over as if to justify her indolence. 

Mrs. Gelson snatched the sheets—hotel notepaper, 
scrawled on irregularly in a faded ink—and adjusted her 
spectacles. 

“Where’d you find these?” she asked sharply. “Them 
was never meant for you to read. They shoulda been 
burnt long ago. You just give me all you got, and trot 
downstairs and get to work. You can finish the rooms 
later.” 

“Was you and pa engaged very long, ma ?” The ques¬ 
tion fell out of an abstraction broken for the first time. 

“None of your business. People didn’t go to such 
flummerinefes when I was young.” Mechanically Mrs. 
Gelston had begun to read, sitting down on the bed heav¬ 
ily, smiling faintly. Some of her wrinkles returned. 

“You and pa musta had an awful good time together 
before you was married, ma.” Arlie shifted her posi¬ 
tion to sit cross-legged, smoothing the skimpy gingham 
over her knees. 

Mrs. Gelston folded the letter with a smirk. “Gee, I 
guess we did, though ... I did, anyway. Why, I 
don’t think none of you girls has the good time I did, 
and I’ll tell you what, too—I had your pa going in them 
days. Why I could make that man do anything I 
wanted. Everybody said so. Hanging around Cora 

[ 8 ] 



Peterson, he was, when I met him, but maybe I didn’t 
send her packing! Then he went to work on the North¬ 
western over at Cedar Rapids, and used to write me 
three times a week. He was just crazy about me. 
Sometimes every day he’d write, and he’d just get blind 
mad when he found I’d been going with anybody else.” 

“Did you go with anybody else, ma?” 

“Lord yes! I should say I did. Think I’s going to 
moon over his letters? Why most of the time I was 
getting ’em I was going with Phil Yoder. I used to show 
him your pa’s letters. Ho! maybe he wasn’t mad when 
I told him I’d been doing it, once. I named your brother 
after Phil Yoder. Your pa didn’t seem to care much by 
that time, somehow.” She paused, as at a disturbed rec¬ 
ollection. “Phil, last I heard of him, owned most two 
sections out in Boone County and had two big cars and 
a Ford to run around in, and used to go out to Cali¬ 
fornia in the winter. That old cat Fan Wylie wrote me 
all about it. Met him at the Iowa picnic out there one 
year. She knew I mighta got him, and she knew what 
I got, too. Gee, if I’d only ’a’ kept my head, and all. 
But then, how’s I to know his brother was going to die; 
and he got his uncle’s farm too. . . . Besides, Oliver, he 
lived in town, and I was sick to death of picking up cobs 
in the hog lot.” 

“It’d been awful nice to go to California, ma.” 

“Of course it would. That’s what I told your pa, too, 
more’n once. If he hadn’t been gassing around all the 
time, just like you, he might of amounted to something. 

Instead of that—look at him.” 

Eagerness sharpened Arlie’s face and eyes. Gee, 
ma, if you’d married Phil Yoder, I coulda had a wrist 

watch and a lavalliere, and . . .” 

“I know, I know. I cried my eyes out more’n once, 

[ 9 ] 


I have. But it’s all done and there’s no undoing it. We 
love and we learn—that’s what they say, anyhow. Only 
not always. Sometimes I sorta hoped for you. You 
ain’t so bad looking.” 

“Was you as pretty as I am, ma?” * 

“Pretty as you! My God, child, you’re pretty, in a 
way, but you just ask your Aunt Min sometime about 
me. Not that she’d admit much though. You take after 
your pa. A little you look like his oldest sister, Marie. 
They was all set I wasn’t going to marry Oliver, but I 
showed ’em. Why”—with rising voice—“I had that 
man wrapped round my little finger, and that’s what you 
can do if you’re good looking, and keep your head.” 

“What d’you mean by—” 

“Now look here, Arlie, you’ll know what you need to 
as soon as you need to. Give me the resta them letters; 
you got some under your dress.” Mrs. Gelston bunched 
them together, then unfolded another. 

As her mother read Arlie waited, thought running its 
subtle indications in her face. There had been parental, 
at least maternal, injunctions before, but never had they 
been more than phrases dropped from the height of age 
and of bread and butter authority. Today the words 
came as nervous gestures having causes found in expe¬ 
riences remote, differently featured, yet essentially the 
same as those she had scented in chance contacts with 
boys, in high school banter, cloakroom insinuations. 
Here was a longer view of such concerns, distant and 
panoramic, not fragmentary—for her mother had passed 
through harmless intrigues, an engagement of a sort, 
marriage, and family making. With a face carefully not 
too righteous, she fixed her eyes on her mother. 

“I’d just like to read Oliver Gelston this,” Mrs. Gelston 
broke out. “Just listen, now, Arlie: ‘I haven’t seen a 

[io] 


girl in Cedar Rapids to put up beside you, Mamie. You 
have them all beat. There is lots of blondes here, but 
none of them has hair like yours or complexions either. 
I don’t blame P. Y.’ (that’s Phil Yoder) ‘for trying to cut 
me out. Only he can’t do it, can he, Mamie? I hope 
we can be married quick, now, for I got my raise and 
maybe I’ll get transferred to Clinton.’ Now you never 
heard your pa say anything like that lately, did you, Ar- 
lie? Or ever? No siree. Oliver Gelston ain’t done a 
word but grumble since I married him.” 

“Go on, ma. What else’s he say?” 

Mrs. Gelston read on, silently, for a letter or two; the 
sheets littering the patchwork quilt on the bed. Then 
again, suddenly: “I had him where I wanted him, then, 
I tell you. Listen now: ‘I don’t care much, Mamie, if 
you go to a dance with P. Y. I can’t expect you not to 
have any good times just because I’m not there to take 
you. But you be careful. If I found him doing any¬ 
thing like you know what, I don’t know what I’d do, hon¬ 
est I don’t, Mamie.’ As if he could have done anything 
to Phil! Why, Phil was big as two of him!” Indigna¬ 
tion gave her voice light nasal gleams as she continued. 
“ ‘So you better be careful. You have your good time 
but remember you’re going to marry me.’ Yes, I re¬ 
membered all right—far as he knows—and look what I 
get for it, work, work—” 

The pause that hung between mother and daughter, 
huge and gleaming, was broken as a bubble by steps in 
the lower hall, whistling, and the slam of a door. 

“My God!” Mrs. Gelston jumped from the bed and 
trotted around it to the hall, tossing the letters into dis¬ 
order on the dresser. “Phil’s dinner! I clean forgot 
it!” .. 

At a lingering pace and with a slow look at the letters, 

[ii] 


Arlie followed. In the kitchen she found her mother 
sniffing the skillet. “I thought so,” she was saying. 
“It’s your fault, too, Arlie, making me chase you all over 
the house. Phil musta used half a pound of butter frying 
that steak!” 

Again the front door opened and shut, this time to let 
in Oliver Gelston, who came down the hall shaking the 
water from his coat—a thin, tall man with a meagre face 
nervously alert under a shock of black hair. His blue 
eyes were like his daughter’s. 

“Dinner ready yet ?” he inquired, dropping into a dining¬ 
room chair. “I see you had something ready for 
Phil, anyway.” 

“There you go,” his wife answered. “Start to grouch 
around before you give me a chance.” She started peel¬ 
ing potatoes. “No, I ain’t got dinner ready, but you can 
see I’m getting it.” 

“I suppose I got to wait for potatoes to boil. I notice 
you had some fried for Phil. He don’t have to wait, 
ever.” He waved a hand toward Phil’s empty plate. 

“Yes, that’s it. Phil got his own dinner I’d like you 
to know. Not that you’d ever do that. But you can stop 
blaming me. Arlie, see if Phil took all that steak.” 

“Course he did,” Gelston put in. 

“Yep, it’s all gone.” Arlie reported from the ice box. 

“Well, he needed it. A growing boy always needs 
more’n the rest of us. Clear off the table, Arlie, and set 
us some places.” 

Gelston sank lower in his chair with a newspaper. 

“The rain’s quitting,” he announced later. 

“Sabout time,” his wife answered from the stove. 
“What made you so late ?” 

“Twenty-four’s held up by a wash-out. Then there 
was a lot of express—bills for the Fourth of July celebra¬ 
te] 


tion. Old Z. T. Morse’s been crazy for ’em near two 
weeks now. I had to call him up and then wait for him 
to come get ’em.” 

“Humph, he won’t get much done this afternoon.” 

Oh, I don’t know. The rain’s over. He’ll get ’em 
out as soon as he can, you bet. Mapleton’s had its bills 
out near a week.” 

“Now I wonder if Z. T. wanted Phil to post bills this 
afternoon. Phil said he asked him to step in. He kinda 
thought he might be going to give him a job in the store. 
But I’ll bet it’s them bills.” 

“Shouldn’t wonder.” 

Arlie, setting the table, watched her father intently, 
waiting for that openness to suggestion in his tired, hun¬ 
gry, rainy day mood that shortly signalled itself by a re¬ 
crossing of legs and an abstracted gaze at the table. 

“Are we going to have a big celebration, pa?” 

Gelston raised his head to look at her. “What do you 
care? You spent all your money on that dress for your 
birthday,” he said, with the rudiment of a grin, and added 
soothingly: “Yep, we’re going to have quite a doings. 
There’s going to be horse races and a parade, and speeches, 
and a baseball game. Quite a time they’re going to 
have.” 

“Is that all, pa?” 

“Well, let’s see. There’s going to be a wrestling match 
and a potato race and three-legged races, and the G. A. R. 
fife and drum corps. Old Isaac Pfannebecker’d have to 
toot it up a bit or it wouldn’t be a Fourth of July, ac¬ 
cording to his notion. There’s going to be a dance, too, 
I guess.” 

“Is ’er?” Arlie stooped to pick up a fallen knife as 
her mother’s voice rasped in high notes from the kitchen. 

“You needn’t think you’re going to no dance, miss. 

[13] 


Not at your age. Public ones at that. Ain’t you got no 
decency? Every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the country’ll 
be at them dances.” 

‘‘Well ma, I’m past age and I can too go, can’t I, pa?” 
Arlie came to the kitchen door, where she could more ef¬ 
fectively defy the one parent and appeal to the other. 

“We’ll see,” her father said; “there’s plenty time.” 

“There now,” Arlie darted her words. “Pa says I can 
go, pract’ly.” 

“Arlie Gelston ! He said no such thing! Think I ain’t 
got no ears? He said, “We’ll see.” And you can just 
bet we will, too. You got the table set yet? Then take 
up the bacon and eggs.” 

Oliver threw his coat over another chair and sat up to 
the table. Arlie appeared with a platter, her mother fol¬ 
lowed with the potatoes, and the meal began. Oliver, 
trying to mash the elusively hard potatoes, finally looked 
up through his ruffled and overhanging hair to remark: 
“Seems to me you mighta got the potatoes done. You’ve 
had since noon to do ’em.” 

There followed an intermittent invective from his wife, 
until, the clamor of her own stomach stilled as well as 
that of his, the meal went on in munching silence, Oliver 
intent on his own needs; but his back was a little bent, 
spring-like, as if in readiness for defensive reaction 
against some grievance that was sure to reemerge. Arlie, 
facing the window, ate but little as she studied the face 
of her father and then that of her mother. 

Standing at the window a moment after her father 
had left the house, she saw his stooped form walking to¬ 
ward town. The rain had ceased and over the buildings 
of Main Street a patch of blue glowed among whitening 
clouds. The yellow of sudden sunlight cast Gelston’s 
shadow behind him. From his pocket he extracted a 

[14] 


plug of tobacco, and biting persistently into it dragged 
his feet toward the station. 


4 

Arlie turned to her mother, who sat with elbows on 
the table, picking her teeth pensively. 

“What’ll I do now, ma?” 

“You can do these dishes. I guess now it’s stopped 
raining I’ll run over to Mrs. Engberg’s a minute and 
take back that butter.” 

In five minutes she had talked her way to the front 
door, and closed it upon a house wherein the silence 
reeked with late presences; but it opened to Arlie a free, 
leisurely period of busyness, in which, after her own 
fashion, the dishes were washed and put away. 

Still her mother had not come home. Arlie went up¬ 
stairs to the back bedroom where the letters still lay in 
disorder. 

Squatted by the window she hastily fingered the de¬ 
caying papers, many of them yellow railroad manila. 
She looked first for the one her mother had read, but it 
yielded little more than had been given to her. Progres¬ 
sively, however, the others cast a faded light on a trivial 
cross-section of other years: the obtaining of railroad 
passes, the complications thereof; a dispute with Soder- 
quist, apparently a boss; a box of cigars at Christmas, 
recollections of a dance at Boone and a certain polka; 
what old man, Herman would say when he found out 
what Nina had done; Laura’s last fellow, whom Oliver 
had seen on his way to Chicago, where he had a job 
promised in a commission house. Yet vitally dim in the 
faded light were the passings and recrossings of that re¬ 
mote, tantalizing yet somehow perfect reality. Little of 

[ 15 ] 


love. With a disappointed eagerness Arlie drew from 
one of the half dozen remaining envelopes two sheets 
scrawled across in a hand larger and hastier than the 
others. 

“Dear Mamie, 

“If you are going to marry me you got no right to bum 
around with Phil Yoder as you been doing. Dont think I 
dont know. You kept me fooled alright when I was in 
Boone but I found out some things. Ben Phetteplace rode 
with me Sunday night as far as Marshalltown and told me 
what he knew. He said Phil Yoder was talking all over 
town one night when he was drunk about that ride he had 
with you after the basket social and dance out at Favor’s 
Grove. How you was dead gone on him and he near got 
you that night, and would the next time. I won’t stand for 
that, Mamie and you know it. If you love me you got to 
quit going with other fellows and you got to quit letting 
them love you around. How do I know where its going to 
stop. You hardly let me kiss you lately and you let him 
do darn near as he pleases with you. Now do you love 
me or not and are you going to marry me. If you are you 
better be thinking of me sometimes. Cant you wait three 
months. We will be married as soon as I get transferred 
to Clinton. That is we will if you stick to me, but if you 
go on as you been going on I am done with you It breaks 
my heart, Mamie I love you more than I can tell you but 
there is some things I wont stand for. Its up to you to 
decide if you want Phil Yoder you cant have me and if you 
try to get him I bet you get left Mamie honest I do. He is 
just playing with you thats all. And did you ever hear of 
me cutting up with any other girls but you. No and I 
havent either. Sometimes I wanted you so much I thought 
I was going to burn out my insides, but you bet I played 
straight by you Mamie and you do the same by me. 

“Oliver.” 

The accidental dropping of this acid upon the illusions 
that were her father and mother galvanized her to vague 

[16] 


action. She stood up. Her eyes gazed without sight at 
the blackened back yard dropping toward the barn, but 
she saw only injustice, her mother had gone to dances— 
she had done dimly worse than go to dances. 

An immature leer of satisfied curiosity marked her 
mouth and eyes, and still she stood there. Under the 
dark brown hair her hot and wondering face with its 
high cheek bones held eyes lighted from within by in¬ 
dignation. 

In the Gelston household she might have been one of 
the daughterly drudges who serve time for their mothers’ 
incompetence had it not been for the interposition of her 
own developing will. That enabled her to find sunlight 
and air through the intervals offered by her mother’s in¬ 
veterate changefulness. 

Her father sometimes helped with a rekindling of 
whatever authority he had once possessed, but that au¬ 
thority had never been large. In the first years of mar¬ 
riage he had wanted whatever sexual companionableness 
his wife’s nature permitted to be given in other than ani¬ 
mal seizure or protest, and so he tried to smoothe out her 
innumerable wrinklings of spirit by acquiesence. That 
failing, and when, after the first years had passed, noth¬ 
ing but unillumined breeding remained—he was capable 
of more—he had been acquiescent in order that his mind 
might be free for the romanticizing of whatever work he 
happened to have. At present he succeeded in thinking 
that the branch line station at Coon Falls was an impor¬ 
tant element in the nation’s consequential business. 

That afternoon Arlie’s father and mother, alternately 
diminished and magnified by the lapse of time which the 
letters made substantial, and translated into the height¬ 
ened characters of lovers, assumed a bright distorted sig¬ 
nificance. They had been, and they passed through, 
what lay more colorfully before her, tantalizingly form¬ 
less. She viewed that future brightness from a stupor- 

[ 17 ] 


ous murk of questions, questions whose uncoiling heads 
roused only to slip again into the long darkness of her 
childhood and adolescence. 

For minutes she stood there, and then for a bound 
hour sat brooding before arriving at even so indefinite 
a decision that in her mother were no answers. She 
would try to talk to her father a little. Drawn, she was, 
to the hungry incompetence of his face, to the unac¬ 
knowledged dream that would limn it momentarily. Per¬ 
haps he could throw light where her mother could 
not. . . . 

Already Ned Rickenberg had spoken of the Fourth of 
July dance; probably he would ask her to go. She must 
give him the chance by seeing him at the Bijou Saturday 
night: most of the boys went to the movies in the hope 
of “picking up” some girl. 

Ned had left high school to work in an implement 
house, and his wages gave him an admired independence 
among the older high school boys. Twice he had brought 
her home from parties, and one Sunday afternoon they 
had walked up the railroad track a mile or two, very pub¬ 
licly it had seemed to Arlie. If he really did ask her to 
the dance, they might, she thought, be considered as “go¬ 
ing together.” He hadn’t tried to kiss her yet, but when 
they were coming home from the second party her mother 
had opened the door before they had even reached the 
front walk. 

Tonight she might have a chance at her father if he 
were in the right mood. 

She seized the broom, standing idle by the door, and 
began a vigorous commotion. 

5 

After supper that night, when Phil had gone to town 
and Mrs. Gelston had again run over to a neighbor’s, 

[18] 


leaving Arlie to wash the dishes, her father strolled into 
the kitchen. 

“Got any matches here, Arlie?” 

“Right on the stove there, pa. My hands is wet.” 

Gelston lit his pipe and puffing it leaned against the 
jamb. “Things go all right today, Arl?” 

“I guess so.” 

“Ain’t you sure?” 

“Why yes. . . . But say, pa, I want to ask you a 
question.” 

“Ask away.” 

Arlie flung the tea-towel over the wooden fingers and 
put away the last of the dishes. Turning she smoothed 
her dress over her slim hips; her thick brows contracted. 
“You see, pa, I want to ask you . . .” Her face grew 
blank, she paused. 

“Yes, go on. What d’you want to ask me?” 

“I want to ask . . .” Her mind was of a sudden va¬ 
cantly stormy. What did she want to ask? 

“Oh, I—well nothing I guess, not now.” 

Gelston shoved himself from his leaning position. 
“What’s eating you tonight?” he said, and returned to a 
dining-room chair and his newspaper. 

Self-consciously Arlie sped past him to her own room, 
where, watching the sleepy haze of light above Main 
Street, she thoughtfully undressed. Unsnapping her 
corset she said aloud, “What was it I was going to ask 
him. anyway?” and in bed she stared for a long time 
at what was caused by the faint commingling of distant 
lights, that made the sky, if not visible, obscurely felt and 
there. 


[ 19 ] 


CHAPTER II 


DEPOT AND MOVIES 
I 

On the Saturday night preceding the Fourth Arlie closed 
the front door behind her and stepped into the soft warm 
evening, an evening circled by an orange radiance of 
sunset and mellowed by growth of shadow. Her white 
and blue gingham brightly focussed whatever light still 
loitered over street and field as she walked to the Ritchies" 
to meet Belle, her chum of the season. They were going 
to the Bijou. 

“Gee, kid, Vs afraid you weren’t coming,” Belle cried 
as Arlie neared the porch. Together they went on, a 
contrasting couple, Belle, well dressed—for Coon Falls 
—plump, with a waxy face heavily powdered, eyes that 
were to blue as cabbage leaves are to green, and a flufif 
of yellow hair. 

“First, let’s go to the station to see the Flyer come in, 
Arlie.” 

“Pa don’t like to have me down there.” 

“Oh, shucks, he won’t care this time. You don’t need 
to let him see you. Besides, things won’t be going good 
at the Bijou for a while. ’Tain’t eight yet.” 

“I know, the boys hardly ever come till then.” 

“Ho! ho!” Belle laughed uproariously. “Thinking 
of boys all the time.” She shoved Arlie away with a 
vigorous arm. “Guess you’d like to see Ned Rickenbers: 
all right!” 


[ 20 ] 


Arlie regained the sidewalk and continued sedately, 
though her voice was raised in answer. “Why Belle 
Ritchie, I’m no more gone on boys than you are! I 
guess you're not one to talk. And who’s wanting to go 
to the depot, anyway?” 

“Aw kid, I didn’t mean nothing.” Belle put a pro¬ 
pitiatory fat arm about Arlie’s waist. “You know that.” 

“Well, it seemed like it. But it don’t matter. ... I 
thought you was going to save that georgette for the 
Fourth.” 

“Ma said I should, but I couldn’t help wearing it to¬ 
night. Sorta get used to it, so I can enjoy myself the 
Fourth.” Then, in a lower tone of great earnestness: 
“Has Ned asked you to the dance?” 

“Has Jake asked you?” Arlie parried. 

“No, he ain’t, and I don’t know what to think. I see 
him with Ned today though. They’re bumming around 
together, I guess. Ned ain’t asked you, has he?” 

“He sorta spoke about it once, said something about if 
they had one, but he ain’t asked me yet. And I don’t 
care if he don’t. I guess my Fourth won’t be spoiled.” 

“Oh, I don’t care, either. Only it seems as if they’re 
going to they might be about it. How do they know 
we’re going to stick around waiting for ’em?” Belle 
turned a placid face, unruffled by her indignation. 

“Well if they don’t I guess we can go together. 
Though we’re ’most too old to go and hang around with¬ 
out any fellows. It don’t look right.” 

“I wonder would they be at the depot tonight?” 

“We can see the Flyer come in, anyway,” said Arlie. 

2 

Main Street in Coon Falls curves from a straight line 
for the descent of a long hill, at the foot of which and 
at the end of the ski-shaped street, stands the station. 

[ 21 ] 


A board walk runs down the outer curve of the street, 
stopping with the brick platform and the low building, 
which is painted a discouraged red. 

The girl’s chatter nervously hushed itself as they en¬ 
tered the waiting-room and stood just inside the door. 
Disappointment sobered their faces. On the worn char¬ 
acterless benches sat a dozen people in varying attitudes 
of vacancy and discomfort, half of them staring listlessly 
at the opposite wall, the others talking in the low tones 
of a doctor’s anteroom. Behind the grille in the corri¬ 
dor leading to the men’s waiting-room Arlie saw the 
green eyeshade under her father’s forward-flung hair. 

‘‘Let’s sorta see whether the train’s on time,” Belle 
ventured. 

“Wait till pa’s gone.” 

“Aw shucks, wha’d’you care? Come on.” Belle 
walked over to look at the board, throwing an elaborately 
casual glance into the men’s waiting-room, and came back 
to report. “Ain’t no one there. Let’s go outside,” she 
said, and pushed Arlie through the door into the gathered 
dusk. The red shell-rim of day remained, fading rapidly. 
Overhead the stars were coming, with a breeze and cool¬ 
ness. Knots of people had by this time collected out¬ 
side, so that Arlie and Belle had to edge their way single 
file toward the farther end of the station. 

“D’you suppose they’re here at all?” Arlie queried 
when they found themselves in a free space beyond the 
baggage truck. “Maybe they went to the Bijou after 
all.” 

“Maybe. Anyway, let’s wait till the train comes.” 

Slowly they came to the end of the platform. Beyond 
lay a strip of cinders, and in the distance rose the top- 
heavy bulk of the water-tank, sharply black against the 
warm night blue. Beside the tank’s supporting timbers 
they could make out three or four figures, with the white 
effect of dresses appearing and being blotted out. A 

[22] 


match spurted and a face flared behind cupped hands. 

“Arlie, that’s Ned Rickenberg. Did you see?” 

“Shucks, you can’t see so far off.” 

“I can too. He’s got some girls with him. There’s 
another fellow there, too.” 

“Prob’bly Jake McCaffrey.” 

“Oh, I don’t know. . . . Maybe it’s not them. What 
they doing down there, anyway?” 

“Waiting for the train, you nut. Let’s go back. If 
they saw us they’d think we was following ’em. I 
wouldn’t follow them for a thousand dollars!” 

“Me neither. Let’s hurry.” They mingled again with 
the people on the platform, and at last a murmur arose: 
“There she comes.” A spoke of pale light wavered 
across the sky, and a yellowish-white brilliance crowned 
the stretch of track, the nebulosity enlarging as the train 
climbed the long hill. A whistle crooned through the 
air, and suddenly the huge darkness of the steel elevator 
across the track was a lighted monolith, stark silver 
against the darkened sky. The faraway brilliance gath¬ 
ered to a hard raying gem, the engine rumbled over the 
crest of the hill, the long rails gleamed and a flying ra¬ 
diance flung itself over platform and crowd. The shuf¬ 
fling shadows of the moving group revealed hard bright 
portraits of a wrinkled old man, a tight-lipped, brown¬ 
eyed mother, a Swede’s ruddy face. The tremble of 
earth, the black roar, the rush of the engine, dimness 
thrown over the crowd as a blanket: then the spotted 
light from the car windows with the hot yellow interiors, 
a screeching of steel on steel and the long relief of es¬ 
caping steam. The crowd contracted to the hardness of 
a taut muscle, and the two girls, compressed into its sub¬ 
stance, were borne with it. 

Extricating themselves they squirmed at last to the 
shelter of the station wall, where they could observe the 
coming and the departing. 

[23] 


“Look, Arlie, there’s old man Riddlesbarger. Been to 
see his daughter, I bet.’’ 

“Yes, but look who’s coming here.” Arlie pointed to 
two couples hastening from the water-tank. “Look Belle 
—Ned and Jake.” 

The boys, with a suitcase in one hand and a girl’s arm 
in the other, presssed into the throng about the car en¬ 
trance; the girls were chatting volubly: “Now Ned, don’t 
you forget what you promised. Jake, gimme that pic¬ 
ture you swiped. Gimme it! There’s just time. Or I 
won’t give you no dances the Fourth.” 

Belle turned to look significantly at Arlie, but Arlie 
stared straight ahead. 

Soon the couples had piled into the car; the boys flung 
the suitcases into the racks and came off. 

“ ’Board,” the conductor shouted. 

Just as the train started one of the departing girls 
frantically opened a window. Poking her head out she 
called, “Now Ned, you be good till I see you on the 
Fourth. I don’t care how bad you are then.” 

A laugh flowed from the men on the platform; heads 
in the car turned to see who had spoken. Ned waved a 
hand. “Don’t worry, old kid, I’ll be there all right.” 

Then the train, through a puffing crescendo attained 
continuous volume, the red lamps winked diminishingly 
down the track, leaving a buzz of silence. Those who 
wished could again be conscious of starlight. 

“Come on, Arlie. We’ll be late to the Bijou.” 

“Look out. We don’t want to catch up with them. 
They might think we came down here to find them ” 

“Humph. I’d like to see ’em think it,” Belle rejoined. 
D’you suppose they’re going to have those girls down for 
the Fourth, really?” 

“Course. Didn’t you hear ’em? That one that yelled 
to Ned must have been twenty-two or three. Plumpish, 
too.” 


[24] 


A rival’s plumpness did not worry Belle. “Come on, 
then. Let’s hurry.” 

As they ascended the hill Arlie changed her views. 
Plainly the thing to be done was to ignore Ned and Jake 
completely. “We’ll sail right past them,” Arlie plotted 
in a low voice, “and don’t you notice ’em at all. If you 
do I’ll never speak to you again, Belle Ritchie.” 

“I! I wouldn’t speak to them—not, not for any¬ 
thing,” Belle affirmed in a weak universal. 

Accordingly, when the level street was gained, the girls 
increased their pace and swerving largely to one side 
walked swiftly past the boys. 

“Hey, where you kids think you’re going?” Ned called 
after them. 

Belle turned her head, but faced front at a rapid clutch 
on her arm and an admonitory jab from Arlie, who with 
head bent was almost running. When they had passed 
about twenty people they slowed down, but not without 
another backward look by Belle. 

“What’s the matter with you, kid?” Arlie asked, 
sharply. “Ain’t you got no sense?” 

“They mighta taken us to the Bijou.” 

“Huh, wha’d’you care? What’s a dime anyway? 
You won’t go broke, will you?” 

3 

The Bijou, a white space in the dimly illumined street, 
shone before them, heliotropic gnats buzzing about its 
lights, and about the illumined marquee over the red, 
blue and brown posters. Heliotropic human beings gos¬ 
siped in twos and threes, or stood idle on the curb in 
light-stunned contemplation. In the dark misty outlands 
were fields, barns, hogs, work of the week. Here the 
world condensed its marvel, flying on the screen. . . . 

Arlie and Belle passed inside the white doors, their 

[ 25 ] 


tickets being taken by a weary, gray-haired, muscular¬ 
faced old man, Gran’pa Tritchler. 

Stuffiness assailed them as they pressed against a pack 
of unseated people. Straining on tip-toe they made out 
the last bickerings of a chase: the tramp jumping a river 
and fat policemen balked at the river’s brim. They 
could only wait for the intermission. 

‘‘I hardly recognized Jessie Tritchler selling tickets. 
When’d she come back, Belle?” 

“Tust lately. Wasn’t that some do she had on her 
hair?” 

“She’d a lot of paint on, too.” 

“Course she did. Just plastered on. That’s her hus¬ 
band running the machine now. Somers his name is. 
Went broke in Sioux City, pa said, and Jessie brought 
him home to sponge off the old man.” 

“There’s the end of the reel. Come on.” And Belle 
and Arlie added themselves to the dark slope of heads. 
Over them the cone of light presently began to project an 
Indian scene. The piano emitted a brassy melody, and 
as a cowboy on his pony grew along a white strip of 
road a wooden “tlot-tlot” behind the screen increased its 
volume. 

“Look at Amy Le Vitre,” whispered Belle. “Is that 
the fellow she’s going to marry.” 

Arlie glanced swiftly from the picture in Amy’s di¬ 
rection. A heavy-jawed young man hung an arm negli¬ 
gently along the back of the self-conscious Amy’s seat. 
“Guess so,” she replied, returning her gaze to the demure 
oglings of the heroine school teacher on the screen, newly 
arrived in a very wild and galloping west. 

“They say she keeps mooning about her old fellow 
still, but ma says she don’t hesitate none about showing 
the diamond she got from this one,” Belle continued. 

“Yeh?” The school teacher, wandering after flowers, 


was being stalked by Indians, whose fiendishly feathered 
heads were dodging behind thickets and boulders. 

“Ma says Horace Nolte’s going broke. Yet there he’s 
got his wife and whole family here. Wouldn’t you think 
he d have more sense than that? Six of ’em, that’s 
sixty cents.” 

Arlie shook an impatient head, and for an interval 
Belle interested herself in the picture. Down in the 
front rows small boys rose in active silhouette against a 
pastoral moment. Then caps darted like black bats 
across the screen. 

“There’s Jake and Ned back there, I think,” Belle 
leaned to confide. 

“What do I care? Watch the picture, can’t you?” 

“You don’t need to be so persnickety.” Belle dropped 
into sullen contemplation with hardly a glance at Arlie, 
who leaning forward tensely, her mouth a-twitch, en- 
wrapt herself in the issues of the developing fight. 
Again from behind the screen came the wooden clatter 
as the cow-boys careered down the dusty road; the piano 
thrummed the vibrant minor of all screen conflicts; the 
Indians struck teepees and broke camp. Too late . . . 
the battle was on. . . . Puffs of white smoke, scurrying 
of squaws. And from behind the screen came poundings 
on the floor, groans, ki-yi’s, war-whoops, mortal wailings. 
The school teacher, rescued from an Indian brave, was 
borne embracedly away; the smoke cleared, disclosing the 
twisted remains, the sorrowing squaws. And still the 
sounds of battle came from behind the screen in undimin¬ 
ished volume, and the caps again thickened across the 
light. 

“O Arlie,” Belle exclaimed, “ain’t that killing?” 

But Arlie did not answer; instead she only dabbed at 
her eyes with a wedged handkerchief. “I thought,” she 
finally said—“I was afraid she wasn’t going to get him.” 

[2 7 ] 


She had observed nothing but the play; and its worn old 
piece of love and obstacle, ground tritely out, had played 
a tune that for her was immune to circumstance. 

“O kid, cry about that!” 

“Let’s go,” said Arlie. “I don’t want to see no 
comedies.” 

Belle, wanting to stay, was touched to action by Arlie’s 
decisive rise. 

Outside the door they stood for a moment in the am¬ 
phitheatre of light, dazedly conscious only of a string of 
men along the curb. Briefly Arlie made out the blond 
face of Ned Rickenberg. She seized Belle’s arm and 
taking the outside piloted her down the walk with never 
a glance at the men. But as they went, voices spoke: 

“Hey Ned, what’s the matter with your little friend? 
1 thought you was sort of home-like around them parts.” 

“Aw, forget it. That little tot! I’m not robbing the 
cradle.” 

Out of the glare they turned the corner from Main 
Street, and starlight fell suddenly upon them. Low in 
the distance rode the pale moon. 

“Did you hear that, Arlie?” 

“I heard all right. And just wait till Ned Rickenberg 
asks me somewhere again.” 

“I guess Jake was with him, too,” Belle admitted. 

“Course he was. Didn’t you hear him laugh?” 

“Did he laugh, Arlie? Honest did he?” 

“Couldn’t you hear him laugh . . . and what he said ?” 

“Jake! Jake didn’t say nothing.” 

“He did too. He said, ‘Me neither—no more cradles 
in mine! 

“Honest did he, Arlie? I didn’t hear nothing. 
Cross-your-heart kiss-up-to-God he did?” 

“Didn’t you hear what I said?” 

“That ain’t swearing to it.” 

“But Belle, I couldn’t swear to it. ’Cause I’m not sure 

[28] 


it was him. It mighta been some one else. Only he 
was standing right next to Ned, and some one said that 
and it sounded like Jake.” 

“Well, if it was I’d like to see him come around me 
again.” 

“Oh, you’d let him fast enough.” 

“Why, Arlie Gelston, I would not. What do you think 
I am, anyway? Who’re the McCaffreys, I’d like to 
know.” 

“Yes, you would.” 

They were nearing Belle’s house now. A light shone 
through the window on the porch, and in the yard a 
sprinkler played its moonlight crystal over the lawn. 
They talked an hour on the steps before Arlie roused 
herself to the lonely moonlight and walked in a dream 
home. 


[29] 


CHAPTER III 


THE FOURTH 
I 

The morning of the Fourth broke into the clear blue of 
an unrelievedly hot day, with a heat incessantly cracked 
apart by sporadic small explosions. Its advent in the 
Gelston household was unheralded by any uproar, for 
Phil, from whom alone it might have been expected, had 
risen early to go to his work in a stand; Mrs. Gelston, 
pressed into service with the Presbyterian Ladies’ Aid 
—occasionally she went to church—feeling that Mrs. 
Jardine would not be satisfied unless she appeared by 
eight, had trotted off fussily at twenty minutes to nine. 
Arlie, alone in the house, put on her best dress with nerv¬ 
ous fingers; and as the blare of a cornet rode the day’s 
discordance, her stomach became a weak panicky void, 
her fingers seemed vacant and frozen. But with a final 
glance at the mirror and another prodding and patting of 
the bows on her oxfords, she ran downstairs just as 
Belle, in her orange-colored georgette, came along the 
sidewalk. 

When they emerged on Main Street it was already 
aswarm with people, the whole vicinity harsh, screeching, 
explosive. Farmers’ wives, many in black, some in 
white, trailed after starched children. Borne on parental 
arms, solemn babies sucked candy, or cried with stretched 
cheeks and shut eyes. The boys and young men wore 

[3°] 


red and green banners about their hats or around their 
chests, that exclaimed in white letters: “Oh You Kid!” 
“I Love You Truly,” etc., and with rainbow-colored 
feather dusters and gay cheap riding whips, they tickled 
polished necks and powdered noses. 

The girls walked past the Bijou. Gran’pa Tritchler 
was megaphoning assurances that the parade would not 
start for a good hour, and that the Bijou was a good 
place to rest in the meantime. Arlie glanced up at a 
small window in the operator’s room. A sleek, blond¬ 
haired man winked and waved at her. 

“Is that fellow up there Somers?” she asked. 

“I guess so. Was he a blond with his hair laying 
back? Then that’s him.” 

At the next side street the parade was forming. They 
stopped. Z. T. Morse, abounce on a careering bay horse, 
his gray beard trimmed for the occasion and a red sash 
around his waist, was riding back and forth, marshalling 
the floats into line. 

Belle clutched Arlie’s arm. “Gee, kid! Look! 
There’s Jake and Ned across the street.” 

Arlie glanced swiftly. “Well,” she said, “don’t let on 
you see ’em.” 

Belle pondered. “Where d’you suppose them girls is 
they had at the train? Hey, stay here. They’re cross¬ 
ing the street.” 

“Not much. Ain’t you got no sense?” And Arlie, 
striking off for herself, brought Belle after her. 

In half an hour, with Ned and Jake irretrievably lost 
in the crowd, Arlie and Belle were awaiting the parade 
on the running-board of an automobile. “Here it 
comes,” said Arlie, and there was a general pressure for¬ 
ward, with straining of necks. 

Far down the street rose the zipping strains of fifes, 
and the electric rumble and bang of the drum. The 
slanted flag, its rich colors flickering in the hot bright 

[3i] 


wind and a point of sunlight agleam on its golden eagle, 
swung to the center of the street. Behind it the fife 
and drum “corps” marched. 

“They’re coming; they’re coming.” Silence flew 
along the street as the parade rounded the distant corner. 
Behind the drum corps the parade took body. 

“Look, Belle. Look at Isaac Pfannebecker blowing 
that fife.” And Isaac, blue-coated and erect, only his 
gray flat head bent, was indeed blowing. By his side, 
topping him a head, marched Eli Brown; behind, with 
back swayed to support the drum, trudged Archie Chute, 
ecstatically flourishing his drumstick. But plainly it was 
Isaac who set the pace, and it was Isaac who, when 
Tramp, Tramp, Tramp was finished, spirited them into 
Marching through Georgia. Feet on the sidewalk beat 
time, and all eyes followed Isaac. It was Isaac’s day. 

“That’ll be about the last time we see all of them to¬ 
gether,” a woman in the automobile remarked. 

Z. T. Morse charged up, megaphone in hand. “There 
will be speeches in the Park. The Honorable James P. 
Marvin of Council Bluffs is the speaker of the day. 
Everybody come!” 

After an hiatus the floats rebegan the procession; a 
display of fire-arms by Z. T. Morse & Co; patriotically 
dressed children listening to the strains of a talking 
machine; the Goddess of Liberty and Uncle Sam, and 
then the decorated surreys and automobiles blazing with 
red, white and blue splendors, the wheels bright whirling 
rings. 

The Marshal of the Day galloped back up the street on 
the other side. . . James P. Marvin, Speaker of the 
Day. Everybody . . .” 

The crowd pressed thicker than ever about the stands, 
the barkers redoubled their efforts; warmish pink lemon¬ 
ade, guaranteed ice-cold, quenched unquenchable thirsts. 
Along the sidewalks small boys rang cowbells, and 

[32] 


dangled signs that announced dinners of Presbyterian, 
Methodist, and Baptist chickens. 

“Belle, there’s Ned again, and Jake. Sh—” The girls 
were standing by the stand in which Phil was working. 

“O you kids!” said Ned, brandishing some gay feath¬ 
ers under Belle’s nose while he looked at Arlie. Two 
bands, “Oh You Baby!” and “Kiss Me. Nothing 
Makes Me Sick,” were wound about his straw hat, which 
was pulled well forward over his red plump face. Jake, 
dark and slim, with a pimply face, leered at Belle. 

“Wha’cha been doing?” he asked. 

“Oh, just bumming around,” Belle answered. “Didn’t 
old Ikey Pfannebecker enjoy himself in that parade 
though ?” 

“Gosh, I guess so—” 

Then Arlie cut in, her face flushed and set. “Where’s 
the lady friends who was going to spend the day with 
you?” 

“Lady friends . . . ?” Ned looked foolishly at Jake. 
“We ain’t got no lady friends, have we, Jake?” 

“The ones you was seeing to the Flyer Saturday night. 
Come on, Belle, or we won’t get no dinner.” 

Reluctantly Belle followed. “Gee whiz, Arlie,” she 
protested, “you’ll never have no fun that way.” 

“Wha’d’you know about that?” they heard Jake ask 
Ned. 

“You wait, Belle,” said Arlie, “I guess 1 know what 
I’m doing. And anyway, ain’t you got no pride?” 

2 

The ball game was half over when Belle, seated on 
the grass, gave a shriek and fell over into Arlie’s lap, 
leaving a monstrous wiggling spider where her head had 
been; slowly the spider followed her. Arlie looked up 
to the grinning face of Ned, noting Jake’s sallow grin 

[33] 


over his shoulder. Caught off her guard she laughed 
answeringly. 

“Ned, you throw that thing away,” Belle commanded. 

“Not till I throw a scare into Arlie with it.” 

“You can’t do that now,” said Arlie. “I know you’re 
around.” 

“Then I guess I’ll just stick around,” he replied, seat¬ 
ing himself at her side. Jake was already beside Belle. 
“Hey, kid, gimme four sacks of peanuts and four bottles 
of pop. Strawberry for one of ’em. What’ll you have, 
Arlie?” 

Later, when the game had served its purpose, Ned 
dared more personal themes. 

“What made you so huffy this noon?” 

“What do you suppose?” 

“I don’t know. Honest I don’t. Wha’d I done?” 

“You done plenty, Ned Rickenberg, and you know it.” 
Discipline was relaxed, yet there were stings whose 
smart lingered. 

“Tell me then, if I done so much.” 

“Not around here, I won’t.” 

“Then come over by the grove—there’s no one much 
around—and we’ll get some ice cream. This game is too 
slow to keep me hanging around.” 

Ned carried two dishes of ice cream from a stand to a 
gray board table, at which they sat on fixed wooden 
benches. It was a moment of relief from light under 
the roof of shade, with the earth, worn to cool blackness, 
gratifying to sun-baked feet. 

“Well, what was it?” Ned began. 

“What you said the other night when me and Belle 
come out of the Bijou.” 

“What I said ?—I never said nothing.” 

“Yes you did.” 

The crimson of his face increased its area; hastily he 
ate his ice cream. “Well, wha’d I say?” 

[34] 


"‘You said you wouldn’t rob the cradle no more.” 

“Well, suppose I did?”—defiantly. 

“You can’t expect me to be so very agreeable, then, 
can you?” Arlie put down her spoon and her eyes held 
a brittle gleam. 

“Aw now, look here, Arlie. I didn’t mean what you 
think I did. Coming up from the depot you sailed right 
past, wouldn’t say a word. I thought you was mad, and 
what about? How was I to know? Wha’d I done?” 

Arlie reflected: He hadn’t really done anything she 
could charge him with. Being on friendly terms with 
another and older girl, was after all no reason for not 
speaking. But—“Well?” she asked. 

“Well ... I thought if you was mad I’d give you 
something to be mad about.” 

“You sure did.” 

“Aw, come on now, Arlie. There ain’t nothing in that 
to be mad about now. You ain’t so young. Any one 
can see that.” 

Arlie dabbled her spoon in the remains of the ice 
cream. 

“Why, you look just as old as the girl I was with 
Saturday night, and she’s twenty-one.” 

“Do I ?” Arlie took a spoonful. 

“Why you sure do, only”—and Ned recalled news¬ 
paper jokes—“only you don’t look old, really. That is, 
I mean—like an old maid or something.” 

“Come on,” said Arlie, her dish cleaned. “Let’s go 
back. We might lose Belle and Jake.” 

“Wait a minute, Arl. Say listen. How about the 

dance tonight? Suppose we go?” 

“Nothing doing.” 

“Going with some one else?” 

“N—no.” 

“Why won’t you go with me, then?” 

“I can’t.” 


[35] 


“Why not ?” 

“Ma won’t let me.” 

“She don’t need to know. Tell her you’re going to 
see the fireworks.” 

Arlie pondered. A great cheer went up from the 
crowd. Coon Falls was evidently evening the score. 
“All right,” she said, “only I’ll have to meet you down 
town.” 

“That’s all right. I’ll meet you by the First National 
Bank about seven-thirty.” 

With her arm in his firm grip they strolled back to the 
game for the last inning, Arlie dragging her feet with 
that assured reluctance which somehow seemed to be 
the gesture of those girls who all day had “belonged.” 

3 

It was Arlie’s first real dance. When the orchestra 
struck up she and Ned were among the first on the floor, 
closely followed by Belle and Jake. Arlie did not partic¬ 
ularly notice Ned; he was there, puffing and grinning, 
not in the role of a definite personality, but rather as a 
justification of her own presence. Through him she was 
a member of adult dancing society; without him she 
would have been at home, or wandering the street and 
having her nose intermittently tickled. He was not a 
person, but some one to dance with. She danced. 

Others danced. By dozens and scores they danced. 
Quickly the hall was stuffy, and collars drooping. It 
seemed to Arlie that half the town was there: Fannie 
McPhail, in a bright green dress, with Ray Jarvis, clerk 
at Horack’s Grocery; Amy Le Vitre, clinging to her 
stocky lover; Tessie Nolte; Althea Holcomb, her red 
hair flashing under the lights; Sam Pettigrew also—his 
red hair answering Althea’s from across the room as he 

[36] 


dipped and caromed from couple to couple, Angie Gar¬ 
field tripping after him; and, of course, Belle, her fat- 
tish face already rosily pressed over Jake’s shoulder. 
Ned pressed Arlie closer, but interposing her forearm she 
levered him away. 

“Hot,” he murmured. 

“Awful,” she returned, her eyes and mind on the 
crowd. 

“Let’s go get some pop after this dance.” 

“All right.” 

The third dance Arlie had with Jake, and then Ray 
Jarvis came up. “Well, Arlie,” he said. “I didn’t sup¬ 
pose you’d be going to dances already.” 

“Yes, and I didn’t know you’d be going to ’em still, 
Gran’pa.” 

“Quit your kidding now, Arlie, and dance this next 
with me, will you?” Ray smiled foolishly. 

“I guess so. If your rheumatism’ll let you.” 

A few numbers later, when the dance had established 
its hot, public, characteristic odor of mingled sweat and 
perfume, Arlie and Ned came back for more pop. “Oh, 
Arlie,” said Ned, suddenly, “I want you to meet my 
friend, Herb Shuman.” Then mumbling, as an after¬ 
thought: “Mr. Shuman, Miss Gelston.” 

Arlie looked into the dark eyes of a tall youth of 
twenty-three or four, whose straight mouth was so thin 
as to leave almost no lip visible. His silk shirt was 
bright, but none of his clothes had that unused shininess 
that characterized Ned and Jake’s efforts. And his eyes, 
gleaming affably, interested her. 

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Shuman,” she said. 

“Pleased to meet you” he responded, squeezing her 
hand. “How about this next dance? What are my 
chances for it?” 

“Pretty good, I guess.” 


[37] 


“Is it a waltz?” he asked, poising to catch the music. 

“I guess so,” said Arlie, marking time with her foot. 
“Sure.” 

There was something different about Shuman’s danc¬ 
ing, a smoothness, a confidence; and he was skillful in 
avoiding pockets and bumps. Ned took the latter good- 
naturedly, and many of them, with no particular regard 
for Arlie’s comfort. And Ned, at best, could only 
shuffle in time. This was waltzing! At the end of the 
main dance Arlie added some vigorous spats to the ap¬ 
plause, and was in Shuman’s arms before the orchestra 
started the first encore to Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland. 
“Gee, they played that at my grandmother’s funeral,” 
Shuman murmured, but the sweetish, trembling strains 
moved in her veins like honey—there was such a thing 
as floating, floating secure in a strong grasp. She nestled 
closer to Shuman, the dancers became a blur of black 
and red, with yellow light from above poured over 
all . . . music. . . . She wondered if Shuman could feel 
the beating of her heart, she thought she could feel his. 
She looked up at his face, red, taut, dreamy, with a queer 
light in the eyes. He looked down and smiled. She 
leaned her head frankly on his shoulder—they danced— 
and plaintively the music throbbed and failed, dying into 
its last phase, with some one near humming the words: 
“There let my dree-eeee-eeams co-o-o-me tru-u-ue.” A 
little self-consciously Arlie let Shuman take her arm and 
lead her to the pop-stand. 

During the next intermission Ned came up impor¬ 
tantly: “Say listen, Shuman’s got his car here and says 
we should all go out in it up on the hill and watch the 
fireworks. Then we can take a ride over to Ft. Dawson, 
maybe, or come back here. What say? He’s got a 
dandy car.” 

They found Shuman with the car drawn up at the en¬ 
trance of the hall. “Jump in, folks,” he called. “Meet 

[38] 


Miss Maneely, you bunch. Tell her your names while 
I crank.” 

In a moment they were moving along Main Street, 
awrithe now with colored tapes, the sidewalks dingily 
colored with confetti, and the street flecked with the 
light particles. The tumpty-tum of the merry-go-round 
dominated the confusion. They turned into a side street 
and the car chugged up the hill. 

4 

Shuman, at the wheel, engaged Miss Maneely in a low 
conversation. Her blown wisps of hair, when odd 
lights caught them, gleamed of gold, and then were dark 
against approaching headlights. She was twenty-two, 
Arlie decided, and of a pleasing slimness—not her own 
kind. Perhaps she might be like that, later. But there 
was an air about Miss Maneely that she enviously recog¬ 
nized as not hers. Perhaps it took that to get a man like 
Shuman. Far better the distinctness of Miss Maneely 
than the lack in Belle’s face, lack of—Arlie couldn’t tell 
what—something. She wasn’t fully a person, somehow, 
as she sat there on Jake’s lap. Arlie had secured the 
middle seat, and there had not been room for more than 
three. She was glad she wasn’t sitting on Ned’s lap. 
Shuman— 

The car stopped. Two other cars were there and a 
number of buggies. Below, in the distance, ran a dull 
length of light, Main Street. Then, in the open space 
at the foot of the street, across from the station, a rocket 
climbed its golden peak, bursting to red, blue, and green 
stars. Others followed, with feathery trails of fading 
orange. Pinwheels spun dizzily in brilliant rounds. 

“Oh!” cried Arlie, starting up. A rocket had burst 
in five stems, like the stamen of a lily, and poised in mid 
air . . . slowly falling. Then the air danced with golden 

[39] 


lines, crisscrosing. Weirdly, enormously, there came 
blooms of red and yellow fire, momently aflame against 
the dulled blue of the sky. 

“Old Z. T. sure spent a lotta money on them things,” 
Jake ventured. 

“Ain’t they purty, though?” said Belle. 

“Purty!” Arlie’s voice rose scornfully. “Flirty! I 
guess so!” 

Another minute and the display ended with a set piece 
hardly distinguishable from the hill. Muffled applause 
rolled on the breeze. Beyond the station only a few 
radiant vestiges gleamed; even they vanished. Above, 
the dome of night, with its undimned stars, persisted. 

“All over,” said Shuman. “Let’s see if we can make 
the Ft. Dawson dance before they quit.” 

Buggies and a few cars were on the move ahead of 
them. The procession solidified. Dust made the road 
nebulous. The town was left suddenly behind and the 
cool of the fields touched their faces. 

Belle relaxed against Jake. “Isn’t this great, Arlie?” 

“It sure is.” Then to Shuman: “How long will it 
take us to make Ft. Dawson, Mr. Shuman?” 

“Oh, I don’t know—’bout forty minutes. But my 
name isn’t Mr. Shuman. It’s Herb.” 

The car took a corner, swinging Arlie against Ned. 
“Better stay here,” he murmured, slipping an arm around 
her. 

“Nothing doing,” she replied, grasping the arm and 
placing it straight in front of its owner. The arm re¬ 
turned, only high along the back of the seat. 

“Now don’t go trying Sunday School stuff on me,” 
he urged. 

“Sunday School nothing!” she retorted. “When did 
you ever see me at Sunday School ?” 

“Last time I was there.” 

“When was that?” 


[40] 


‘‘Five years ago.” They laughed. 

Miss Maneely turned around. “What’s this talk about 
Sunday School ?” she inquired. 

“Oh, nothing. Arlie just remembered she’d forgotten 
the golden text.” 

“What’s a golden text?” Shuman put in. 

“ ‘Do unto others as you’d have ’em do to you’ is one 
of ’em. Guess I know. Bright boy, I am.” Jake spoke 
across Belle’s tousled head. 

“I been practicing that all right,” Ned remarked, lower¬ 
ing his arm to contact with Arlie’s shoulders. “Come 
on, now, Arlie”—in lower tones—“be a Christian.” 

They were off the main highway now, and skirting the 
edge of a dark road along the river. Suddenly Shuman 
ran the car to one side under the bowering shade, and 
bent forward to put out the lights. Belle was cuddled in 
Jake’s lap, her head on his shoulder, her face subject to 
his repeated kisses, her ears to his low broken murmurs. 
Shuman threw an arm about Miss Maneely, and unpro- 
testingly, as if it were merely time, she leaned toward 
him and her head disappeared beneath his shoulders. 
Ned grew restive, and his arm lay more heavily on her, 
then slipped to her waist. Arlie, large-eyed, sat look¬ 
ing across the opposite green cornfield, sibilant under a 
warm wind, to the rising blue of the night sky. 

“Come on, kid,” Ned breathed, “don’t be lonesome.” 
Then putting her arms around his neck, Arlie hugged 
herself close, and Ned’s lips grew busy. 

“Well, what d’you know about that?” said Jake, re¬ 
gaining consciousness of his surroundings. 

“What?” Belle looked up. 

“Why look at the little one. Just as comfortable as 
any one.” 

Miss Maneely raised her head: “What’s up ?” then, 
“Oh,” and dropped back. 

Arlie’s eyes were closed. Ned’s chest rose and fell 

[4i] 


gently. She moved her head and he tucked it closer into 
his arm. “Cold, kid?” It was warm there, hot, and 
Ned’s body, sweaty from the dance, smelled; yet some¬ 
how satisfyingly. Would it be different with Shuman, 
she wondered. Miss Maneely was lucky. Closeness was 
nice—but the rest—she was not so sure. Ned grew more 
demonstrative, circling her body with one arm and fum¬ 
bling for her breast. She pushed his hand away, gently, 
partly because the gesture was new, uncalled for; partly, 
perhaps, because there was so little breast. Then, 
quickly, as if in contrition over the last denial, but with 
eyes still closed, she strained up and kissed the face bent 
over her. 

Her eyes glimmered open. With a shock she saw 
Ned’s yellow hair, his flat face. She had expected . . . 
No—it was silly. . . . Ned’s kisses redoubled, and some¬ 
where, at the side, in front, there was a commotion. The 
car jumped forward and she sat up. 

Ned pulled her back against him, but for the rest of 
the time she rode with eyes open, though her body was 
relaxed against his. 

“Guess we’d better not try to make Ft. Dawson to¬ 
night,” Shuman called back. “I forgot I had to take 
Marvel back to Wenley yet.” 

So that was Miss Maneely’s first name—Marvel 
Maneely—much prettier than the plain Arlie Gelston 
that was so harshly familiar. 

The moon was obscured now and dimness misted all. 
Only the road was whitened by the flying wedge of light, 
the weeds at the roadside blurring. Back on the main 
highway they encountered the dusty run of homeseek¬ 
ing cars and carriages, the horses trotting smartly. The 
yellow flash of the occasional headlights was dazzling. 
Shuman leaned intently over the wheel, with Marvel 
throwing him now and then an indistinguishable re¬ 
mark. ... It was even better than the dance. 

[42] 


Out of the flatness the foliage-filled mass of the town 
confronted them. Swinging down Main Street for a 
block they found it littered and deserted, except for men 
packing away goods in the stands by the light of flar¬ 
ing gasoline torches. In front of Horack’s Grocery 
Store a farmer boy was lashing a horse cruelly. The 
lights of the Bijou were out. 

5 

Arlie slipped from the car with a hasty “Good night.” 
The house was dark. Softly she turned the latch and 
tip-toed upstairs. Gaining her own room she closed the 
door with prolonged gentleness, and turned on the light. 

But in half a minute soft pads sounded in the hall¬ 
way, and the door opened to disclose Mrs. Gelston in her 
night-gown, her hair frowsily falling over her shoulders. 
She was blinking sleepily, menacingly, her face striving 
for authority, but her voice was only querulous. “Arlie 
Gelston, where you been all this night? I ain’t slept a 
wink for worrying.” 

Arlie untied a shoe defiantly. “I been to the dance.” 

“Arlie, I told you you couldn’t go to no dance. Not 
at your age. It ain’t right, and I won’t have it.” 

“You can’t help it, ma. I been.” 

“Can’t help it?” Mrs. Gelston advanced to the edge of 
the brown scarred‘bed. “You’ll just see if I can help it, 
Who’d you go with ?” 

“Belle Ritchie.” 

“Oh now, you don’t need to try to get out of it, 
‘Who’d you go with ?’ I asked.” 

“Well—Ned Rickenberg.” 

“Humph. Who’s Belle with ?” 

“Jake McCaffrey. Rather have me with him?” 

“No. Can’t say I would.” Yawning. “Not that 
there’s much to choose. Who else was there?” 

[43] 


“Pretty much everybody.” 

“Well, who?” 

“Well, let’s see. Ray Jarvis—he danced with me once, 
’n Amy Le Vitre, ’n—” 

“Was Amy with that heavy-jawed fellow from 
Beaver? Ribble his name is.” 

“Ya. How d’you know?” 

“I’s hearing about ’em today. He’s got four hundred 
acres over there. How that Amy Le Vitre got him is 
more’n I can tell. She ain’t so much, s’far as I could 
ever see.” 

“Anyway, she was there, and Althea Holcomb and 
Sarah El dredge— The catalogue grew as Arlie un¬ 
dressed. At last, her sleepy mind astir with whirling bits 
of gossip, Mrs. Gelston padded back to bed, though not 
without turning at the door to remark: “Well, I’ll see 
about you tomorrow, young lady, when I can talk it over 
with your pa. You left the door unlocked for Phil, 
didn’t you? ’Cause he ain’t home yet.” 

In bed Arlie stared a long time at the indistinguishable 
ceiling and passed imperceptibly into a dream-ridden 
half sleep, wherein bits of melody flickered in her mind 
in a relentless iteration of sweet, thumpy tunes. She 
stirred. The lights of the dance hall glowed above her 
bed, and there were soft warmish pillows, with the bed 
blurring into the darkness. Then again she floated on 
with Shuman, down through a maze of laughing people in 
bright red waists. And whizzing along a country road, 
her head on Shuman’s chest, she was kissed and kissed; 
but she could not return his kisses. Firecrackers 
poppled on all sides, above them the sky was arched in 
gold. Then soft whirring darkness came upon them. 
She was kissing him and his hands were on her round 
full breasts. Out of a corner leered Ned’s ruddy smiling 
face, with Jake’s sickly grin cast over Ned’s shoulder. 

. . . They should all go away—she told them to—and 

[44] 


leave her and Herb alone. They ought to be together 
because there was something—they shouldn’t know, 
they couldn’t understand—there was something she 
wanted to ask Herb. Something very special she was 
going to ask Herb. . . . 

No—it wasn’t right to ask him. He was a stranger, 
nobody in the family knew him. She would ask Ned 
when they danced together, and here came Ned, queerly 
tagged by Sam Pettigrew with his harsh red hair. 
“Ned,” she was saying when blackness came—a long 
whizzing blackness out of which round yellow lights 
danced, those in front of automobiles. She couldn’t ask 
Ned, he was too far away. She must ask somebody 
nearer—her father, who stood leaning against the door¬ 
jamb of the dance hall. “What’s eating you?” he was 
saying. No! . . . horribly not her father. . . . 

More clearly conscious of the bed, though with the 
back of her mind riotously agleam with lights and faces, 
she stared dully at the moon’s silvering of the white paint 
along the window sill. The sill faded, cloudily the room 
grew dark. 

Somewhere in the distance a firecracker exploded. 


[45] 


CHAPTER IV 


MOVING HORIZON 


Mrs. Gelston and Arlie were washing the last of the 
dinner dishes at half past five of a July afternoon. The 
temperature, good for corn, when combined with the 
blast of dry heat from the range in which a cob fire was 
dying out, made the kitchen bleak with heat. The dishes 
were finished, supper was prepared and eaten in an op¬ 
pressive warmth of silence broken only by words as usual 
as the meal; and again the dishes confronted them. 

“Now Arlie, you clear up,” Mrs. Gelston announced, 
as if she were laying down a matured plan, “and I got 
to run over to Mrs. Lawrence’s, and by the time you get 
’em ready I’ll be back to help you. It’s too hot for one 
mortal to do ’em alone.” 

When she had gone Arlie rushed the washing of the 
dishes. She knew that it would be a good hour before 
her mother returned, and she wanted to be out of the 
house by then. That would avoid questions and some 
possible trouble, for at eight o’clock she was to meet Shu¬ 
man near the cemetery. 

It had been arranged one evening a week before, when 
Shuman had suddenly appeared in the drug store where 
she and Belle had been eating “happy thought” sundaes. 
He had wanted to take them out in his automobile then, 
with a friend called “Dolly”—short for Dolliver, it de¬ 
veloped later—but Belle, through much giggling and 

[46] 


prodding of Arlie with her foot, had ultimately informed 
them that she must be home at nine or she’d “catch it.” 
Arlie had not wanted, or though wanting, had not dared, 
to go alone. The later date had then been set, and 
though Shuman had gallantly promised to bring Dolly for 
her,. Belle had refused. Silently Arlie had watched her 
squirm near and then giggle away from acceptance. So 
much giggling had hardly seemed decorous. 

Afterwards she had drawn from Belle the promise of 
the yellow georgette waist, which she had smuggled into 
the house the night before. This, with a white picquet 
skirt, white lisle stockings, and black oxfords, completed 
the costume in which, her mother not having returned, 
she left the house for her walk toward the cemetery. 

2 

The cemetery lay between the railroad track and the 
river at the end of town opposite from the station, and 
across the river from the rundown section known as Old 
Town. There the town had first been established beside 
the dam, which was the only justification of the name 
Coon Falls. Later the coming of the railroad had 
shifted trade toward the station; the mill by the dam had 
ceased to grind, and Old Town retained little to boast 
except age. One store still kept up a bread and cheese 
existence, and two other false-front buildings beside it 
stood eyeless and vacant. Newcomers to Coon Falls 
called Old Town “the East Side,” and only laborers 
dared to live there—laborers and “old man Wharton,” 
whose great gaunt house sat far back on the hill above 
the gray shacks. It was a community joke that the only 
difference between Old Town and the cemetery was the 
side of the river. But the decay of Old Town—old on 
the prairies but young in the world—and the mellowness, 
and the freedom from surveillance, made the adolescent 

[47] 


and the coupled greatly prefer it. No real objection 
could be brought to bear against it: neither part of the 
town had any particular history, only it was dimly felt 
that if anything disreputable should occur it would oc¬ 
cur in Old Town. On Sunday afternoons the most re¬ 
spectable family groups wandered down there—a sur¬ 
vival, perhaps, of that period of a decade before when a 
small steamboat had paddled over the nine navigable 
miles above the dam. Arlie could herself remember two 
or three trips on the “Rosalie,” whose old hulk lay now 
broken and rotting on the rocks below the lower bridge 
she was crossing. 

A canoe, dark green on the darker, shrunken water, 
sent light ripples gleaming dully toward the banks. The 
girl in the canoe dabbled her hand in the water and spoke 
to the youth who was paddling. Both looked up at Ar¬ 
lie, who had loitered by the railing of the bridge. For a 
moment Arlie felt her loneliness. The faintly amused 
glance of the couple, who had a background and a little 
of the condescension that goes with backgrounds, stripped 
her of that companionable sense of the nearness of eight 
o’clock. Uncomfortably she left the bridge, yet paused 
with a vague defiance on! the cemetery side—she 
was not to be driven away—to watch the dam, its thin 
roll, taut plunge and soft confusion of water. Then 
past the old graves she went to the farther corner of the 
cemetery, where were ranged the new graves with their 
smart, smooth, large stones. Beyond the near road ran 
the tracks, and along the road buggies rolled into town, 
a wagon jolted away into dust. Then toward Coon Falls 
came Shuman’s automobile. 


3 

“All dolled up, eh?” Shuman called. Arlie did not 
answer. Her costume was effective, she felt, and she 

[48] 


was glad it had been noticed; she thought, too, as she 
climbed in, how much more effective it was than the 
changeable taffeta of the girl—or was she a woman?— 
in the back seat. 

“That’s Dolliver behind you, there,” Shuman an¬ 
nounced, “and his wife Pansy.” Arlie half turned as the 
car started, to murmur, “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. 
Dolliver—” 

“Ha ha! That’s good—” Shuman cried back to them. 
*‘Mrs. Dolliver!” 

Arlie flushed. 

“Well, I thought you said ‘Mrs/ ” 

“Nothing but a joke,” he explained. “They’re always 
together, see?” 

Constrained, Arlie did not immediately enter the chat¬ 
ter of the other three. The car swung across the bridge. 
The couple in the canoe still loitered near, and as the 
car rumbled over the planks Arlie smiled at them 
superiorly. 


4 

This was only one of many similar rides, the first few 
of which were taken clandestinely. Elaborately Arlie 
sought to conceal from her mother her whereabouts, 
speaking of visits to the Bijou, walks with Belle; and 
for a time Mrs. Gelston remained unsuspecting. 

Usually Dolliver and Pansy accompanied Shuman. 
Dolliver, stocky, white-faced, black-maned, she could not 
definitely continue to dislike, she found, nor like; and 
gradually she began to find good nature behind Pansy’s 
convex, emaciated, over-rouged face. “Spanish-like” 
she called it to herself; and in the twilight admired her. 

The times she loved were the times when Shuman 
came alone. Then she could loll back to watch his easy 
manipulation of the car. His taut body, quick hands 
and quicker eyes touched in her a vibrancy that lulled 

[49] 


her into forgetfulness of all but his face, cameo-clear 
against the flying blur of landscape. So sunk it was only 
with difficulty that she could rise through the serene 
depths of her contemplation to answer at intervals the 
banter he threw at her. Once, irritably, he asked her 
if she were tongue-tied, and thereafter she sought for 
“things to say,” which were not hard to find; all he re¬ 
quired was brief signs of attentiveness. 

On the first night there had been a tremble of fear in 
her mind: half she feared and half she hoped for some 
nearness with him. She knew before they had gone 
many miles that Pansy was in Dolliver’s arms, and they 
were murmuring. But the first two rides were destined 
to stay in her mind vacantly apart. With never a sign 
Herb had let her out of the car a block from home. But 
he had looked into her eyes, bending over and talking, 
unheard by the others, with an intensity in his eyes like 
the low tone of his pleasant voice. It was on the third 
ride, the last Mrs. Gelston was to be ignorant of, that the 
break came, suddenly. 

They had been one evening near a little resort farther 
up the river, a sort of picnicking place that was a combi¬ 
nation of dingy store, ice cream parlor, and boathouse. 
Dolliver and Pansy had gone to get ice cream and pop 
for all, but had been dilatory. Ten minutes Arlie and 
Shuman waited while the car chugged nervously and 
they talked. 

“Aren’t they ever coming?” Arlie had asked finally. 

“We’ll let them do a little waiting,” Shuman answered, 
and shot the car ahead into the winding wood road that 
paralleled the river. As the low branches of the trees 
along this unfrequented road snapped down and back 
Arlie ’knew and knew by the sudden surge in her breast 
like the rush of the car itself that around these flying 
curves something waited. She held up an arm to ward 
off the leafy swoop of the branches, and laughed. Con- 

[So] 


fusion flowed past her and a dusky confusion mounted 
within her. A quarter of a mile they ran, Shuman said 
no word and Arlie did not look at him. A sharp swerve 
and they banked against a thicket of darkness, a blind 
alley with trees as gray pillars rising in the thrown light. 
Then Shuman kicked at the switch and the trees went 
out, dimness flowed over them, she was in his arms, bent 
over beneath his warm strength. Time stopped. 

“Herb/’ she murmured. “Don’t . . . I , . 

“Don’t what?” he whispered. “Think I’m going to 
stop? I can’t keep away from you. I been wanting to 
hold you here for the last two months it seems like. 
Since that dance. Only . . .” 

“Only what?” 

“Well, I was sort of afraid of you. Afraid to start 
anything, I mean. You weren’t like the rest.” 

(“Not like the rest.”) 

“Listen, Arlie . . . I . . .” Time shot a moment 
forward. 

“You . . . what, Herb?” 

“I don’t know . . . I . . . oh, kid!” 

But in a few minutes she lay relaxed upon his arms, 
watching the stars among the leaves. Herb seemed con¬ 
tent to hold her, and neither kiss her nor talk. Sibilance 
was in the trees. They were somehow enveloped in an 
unknown moving, nameless and unrecognized. Then by 
one impulse Arlie sat up and Herb got out to crank the 
car. Slowly they returned, to find Dolliver and Pansy 
waiting and voluble. 


5 

v 

A few days later Mrs. Gelston returned to the house 
with lips set and eyes lit, not with maternal concern but 
with vindictiveness and an appetite for details Arlie could 
alone supply. Perhaps Arlie’s refusal to glut her mother 

[SI] 


with what she wanted was responsible as much as any¬ 
thing for the struggle that followed; for beyond dates,, 
places, and people Arlie would not go, and these were 
but outlines. The ensuing days, spent mainly in the hot 
kitchen, were unrelieved by even a trip to the Bijou, for 
her mother had finally spoken to her father, and severity 
had followed. Arlie had overheard them talking, and 
her father had called Herb “a young pimp,” adding: 
“What he needs is a damn’ good horsewhipping, and I’ll 
give it to him too if he don’t watch out.” Then he had 
come to the kitchen with brilliant eyes to tell her to stay 
in the house for the next week, and to mind her mother 
in everything she said. “If you don’t,” he had ended, 
“I’ll see to you myself.” What “seeing to” her might 
mean practically Arlie did not ponder. Behind her fa¬ 
ther’s order had lain, as always, a threat, as if sometime, 
somewhere, that both had forgotten now, there had been 
between them an understanding and an intimacy. To 
that relation disobedience would be more than disobedi¬ 
ence, it would be disloyalty. When he spoke at such 
times a sense of injury colored the anger in his tones 
. . . as if she had almost revealed the secret they had 
formed. Always when he was angry she felt frightened 
and, at the same time, closer to him. 

Even this injunction would have been finally ignored, 
however, if Gelston had not been silent to moroseness for 
the next few days, coming home late for meals and leav¬ 
ing immediately after. But his condition served really to 
alleviate her own, for Mrs. Gelston began to talk of him. 
“Always queer like that. Why, I remember—” she 
would go on. And Arlie listened, pumping up an in¬ 
terest she could not feel in all the circles of her mother’s 
reasoning. Occasionally she tried an appeal to her 
mother’s own youth for precedent. To no avail. 

Thursday had been the date set for the next ride. 
Wednesday as Arlie washed dishes—the greasy piles 

[52] 


seemed endless—she pleaded with her mother. Her fa¬ 
ther came home more glum than ever. Desperately, af¬ 
ter supper, she washed dishes again, and worked at the 
kitchen until it shone with cleanliness for one of the few 
times in years. Even the dishes in the cupboard were 
piled evenly on clean newspapers. But in so hoping to 
win her mother she was hopelessly astray. Mrs. Gelston 
accepted the immaculateness as a gift due from a right- 
minded daughter. “Now you got it half way clean,” she 
said, “see’t you keep it clean.” 

It was late by that time and Arlie went up to bed. 

Thursday evening she made one more attempt, but 
Mrs. Gelston set her mouth and went to a neighbor’s, af¬ 
ter weaving threats all about the house. Knowing that 
her mother would be gone for an hour of two Arlie felt 
like slipping out anyway, but remembered her father, 
whose mood persisted. Dry-eyed but with aching head 
she sat by her bedroom window, imagining that she saw 
the car stopping by the cemetery for a long wait, with 
Herb smoking cigarettes and Dolliver and Pansy getting 
impatient to be on to the dance at Blanchard. Would 
Herb get some one else? Whom? Belle . . . ? No, 
he wouldn’t take Belle. Marvel Maneely? But Marvel 
lived in Wenley. It would be too late to get her. 

A car had gone by. Her heart throbbed tumultuously. 
She rushed to the front room to look out the window; 
the car, with a couple in the back seat, was disappearing 
around the corner a block away. It had looked like 
Herb’s. She waited straining to catch sight of it again, 
but was rewarded by only a blur across the narrow in¬ 
terval between two houses. Controlling a sob she 
clutched the curtain. The street that had run a thing 
alive with possibility relapsed to gray, and out of near¬ 
ness the houses emerged and swept up, hard and near 
and stony in their gray color of sameness, solidly un¬ 
significant. 


[53] 


She went back to her own room to undress. Hours, it 
seemed to her, she lay in bed, dry and wooden. Her 
mother returned, moved about downstairs, came upstairs, 
and stopped outside her door. Arlie pretended to be 
asleep and breathed heavily, regularly. The door opened 
and her mother entered. 

“Arlie, are you asleep? Mrs. Lawrence was saying 
. . . Arlie?” Mrs. Gelston hesitated, then tip-toed out, 
closed the door and went down stairs. 

Arlie turned on her side—carefully—then cried into 
the pillow in long choked sobs that could not be heard 
outside the room. 

The next day she went about her work in sharpened 
silence. For once her mother had little to say, but eyed 
her continually. Arlie wondered vaguely what was at 
work in her mind. At last Mrs. Gelston spoke: 

“Arlie, Mrs. Lawrence was saying that Shuman’s fa¬ 
ther was a retired farmer and owned about five sections 
of land. She sorta thought it would be all right to let 
you go with him. ... Is that so?” 

“Is that so?—that you ought to let me go with him? 
Of course it is.” 

“You know I don’t mean that. I mean what I said. 
Has his dad got five sections of land?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“Didn’t you ever hear him say?” 

“No—think he’s going around bragging the way you 
would ?” 

“You mind what you’re saying. . . . Didn’t you ever 
hear?” 

“I know he’s got more’n one farm. Herb was up to 
one near Cluver one time.” 

The work was easier that day, for Mrs. Gelston 
wanted Arlie to talk, and Arlie talked, seeing that .she 
had erred before in withholding from her mother facts 
of such rich concern. Speculatively the extent of the 

[54] 


acres was dealt with, almost altogether by Mrs. Gelston, 
who pieced together what she had heard and what Arlie 
could recover from remarks of Herb and from allusions 
dropped by Dolliver. At last, Mrs. Gelston gave her 
consent for more rides, and on Saturday afternoon Arlie 
mailed to Herb a garish post card bearing the inscription: 
“Gee but this is a dead town!” below which she had writ¬ 
ten, “Let me explain about that date,” and her initial's. 
Two days later the answer came: “Driving back from 
Cluver tomorrow evening. Meet me 7:3c) at old place.’* 
But his was a letter. 

That was the last time they met at the cemetery. 
Thereafter Herb came to the house for her, and; each 
time, as soon as the car stopped outside and Herb, 
honked, Arlie, who had flown to touch her face with her 
new powder just once more, would hear her mother steal 
into the parlor. There, from behind the old lace cur¬ 
tains, she would peer at Shuman until Arlie went out and 
they drove away. 


[55] 


CHAPTER V 


AUGUST 

I 

The hot days of August in Iowa, which before had been 
to Arlie the unrelieved meaning of summer, came to be 
only a bright coin of penalty paid for the wide evenings 
when she and Herb and their companions trailed the 
dwindling light in the west, overtaken at last in the long 
roads of dusk by the night they fled and welcomed. 

Evening and night. Steel of the day becomes mist. 
An unlit growth, new consciousness of body, mind a 
formless dusk, lips wordless instruments, voluble in new 
designs. After centuries an arm or a leg shifts. Its 
movement is continental and vast, having its own heavy 
melodic significance in a harmony of contact and with¬ 
drawal—and all within a world contracted to sky and 
field, or the clump of trees under which they waited, with 
time. Hands inquire of passive bodies. Cloyed mouths 
and wet strained lips. Eagerness sickening to weariness. 
•Slump of frustration: 


2 


“Don’t!” 

“Don’t what?” 

“I’m tired of it. Take me home.” 

“Tired of what? There’s nothing to be tired of.” •* 

[56] 


“Oh, isn’t there!” 

“Come here and I’ll show you.” His arm drew her 
over and across his lap. “Now, see.” And he drew 
her closer, closer, his hands pressing on the slight flesh 
upon her ribs. Exhausted, she gave up, and drew his 
head down to the sick strain of more kisses. 

“Tell me you’re tired, do you? How about this? 
You don’t act tired to me.” 

She relaxed to inertness. Blackness flowed within her 
and stagnated. Against the leaf-dappled sky his head 
bent in silhouette above her, his face just distinguishable. 

A scream rose from the back seat and Pansy thrust 
her head over Herb’s shoulder. “Let’s be moving. This 
Dolliver bores me, and he’s too fresh. I’m—” 

“Shut up,” grunted Dolliver from behind. A match 
crackled and its reflection flared in the windshield. 

Arlie turned listlessly. “Sit down, Pansy. Dolliver’s 
all right. Let us alone.” 

“What’s the matter? Want to fight in peace ?** 
Pansy’s voice was high and flimsily metallic. 

“Maybe. Anyway, what if we do? It’s our business* 
ain’t it, not yours?” 

“Oh, sure, go ahead. Don’t let me break up the 
family party.” And she disappeared to the rumble of 
Dolliver’s voice. 

Arlie smiled up at Herb and began to finger his necktie. 

“Let it alone,” he protested, suddenly. “And sit up. 
You’re too damn’ heavy.” 

“Oh, am I!” Arlie sprang to her seat. “Get out and 
crank up. I told you I was tired of this.” 

“Yes, and so’m I.” His feet thudded on the ground. 
“This free bus line I been running ain’t what it’s cracked 
up to be.” He stopped to light a cigarette before climb¬ 
ing into the car. 

“Free bus line, eh?” 

“Yes, ‘free bus line eh/ but this is its last trip!” 

[57] 


“Last trip is right,” she said; “especially with you. 
You can ride back with Pansy. Dolly, climb over here 
and run this car home. Some one ought to run it once 
that can run it.” 

“You stick where you are, Dolly, if you know what’s 
good for you. I think I’ll run this old boat a little 
while yet.” 

Dolliver was climbing over the seat to take the wheel 
of the vibrating car. “Calm thyself, Herbie. A little 
rest from the s’vere nervous strain you been under’ll be 
good for you. And Pansy ain’t talked to you for a week. 
Besides I want to chat a bit with li’P Arlie.” 

Herb started to protest, then jumped on the moving 
automobile to sink heavily beside Pansy. With her he 
kept up a conversation low with satirical tones, and 
Pansy shrieked her laughter as they sped down the road 
that flew toward them along its corn-bordered aisle. 
Once Arlie caught her own name, then that of Dolliver, 
to whom she turned at last in reply to his unheeded talk. 

“You make the old car buzz, don’t you?” she asked. 

“I’m the kid all right. Herbie don’t know how to get 
the speed out of her. Watch her take the gas.” 

At his words Arlie winced a little—for Herb; and 
again she heard Dolliver’s name coupled with her own. 
“It’s great to go like this,” she confided, snuggling closer. 
Dolliver was big, his body hard, and his black hair was 
blown from his wedge of unhealthy white face. He 
wouldn’t be so bad if you didn’t remember the pimples. 
To avoid seeing them, even dimly, she moved closer. 
The talk in the back seat stopped. 

She drew back. At no moment had she intended more, 
but Herb had let himself be manoeuvered too easily. He 
should have wanted to ride back with her, should have 
been cold, insistent, even hard. Instead he had acqui¬ 
esced. She hesitated. 

“Oh, go ahead and be comfortable,” Herb called. 

[ 58 ] 


Glancing behind she saw Herb’s arm laid along the top 
of the seat above Pansy’s shoulders. Then she put her 
head on Dolliver’s arm. The gesture was frank, but she 
herself was in an ache of confusion, trying to lose her¬ 
self in tolerance blurred by defiance. 

“Just a little higher, little one. I can’t steer that way.” 

She flinched back. It was not for Dolliver to choose. 
The blur mottled, vanished, and Dolliver stepped into 
harder perspective. “Oh, can’t you! Can you steer 
any way?” 

“I generally manage to keep her in the road. Ain’t 
that enough?” 

“If it’s all you can do I suppose it is.” 

They were nearing the town now, which above the 
hard, even, black horizon sent upward its fringe of light. 
Arlie sat rigid, her face tense, dull vacancy in her breast 
Back to Coon Falls, Coon Falls. . . . She was too near 
the morning when people would walk the streets and 
wagons clatter in and out of town. Bacon and eggs, oat* 
meal. The red light of dawn softening the colors of the 
town, hardening its brilliance, and at last welding it to 
a unity of green and brown and heat. 

“Good night, kid.” Dolliver had let her out in front 
of the house. “Sleep tight.” 

And as the car drew away, “Night, Arlie,” Pansy 
called, with too much of good will for any of it to have 
been meant. The words rang on in a crescendo of sar¬ 
donic echo as she realized, stupidly, that she had seen 
Herb’s arm leave the back of the seat to encircle Pansy. 
A step and she shivered—with nervousness, with fatigue, 
because of the grainy vague ache in her back, the cramp 
in her legs. The pulse of motion persisted and was a 
muted tingle in her head and body. She stood on the 
porch, dim in the tarnished silver moonlight; then open¬ 
ing the door stealthily, she closed herself within the 
musty darkness of the house. 

[59] 


In her room she yawned as she unlaced a shoe, shook 
it off, and fell back on her bed, exhausted. Through 
the dark came the wedge of Dolliver’s white face to im¬ 
pose itself above her disordered memories. She had en¬ 
dured him. . . . And Pansy’s face, a long nose with a 
bluish bridge, routed Dolliver’s face, to leer at her with 
sick pale eyes. ... To strike Pansy! ... to draw a 
cruel hand over and deep into her face, making those 
eyes droop with pain. . . . 

Herb was gone with Pansy in the car that was shooting 
now along a level road she knew well, past Geiselhardt’s 
farm, past Garlock’s, past McRobert’s—straight on down 
the dim road to Lawson, with Dolliver’s hair combed by 
the straight wind; and in the back seat Herb holding 
Pansy close, chatting as he did chat, thinking thinly of 
her, or not thinking of her at all. Was it a “fight” they 
had had? 

Her face, straining toward the discernible window, was 
-almost uplifted to that place for light, where only the 
brownish-gray glimmer of the night was apparent. Her 
slim form in her disordered clothes was stretched cross¬ 
wise on the bed; the defeated remnants of daylight gath¬ 
ered slowly to overlay the pallor of her face with a low 
visibility; the face seemed to fix itself as something de¬ 
tached yet central, and its only meaning was the tired 
asking of a question no one could answer. 

After minutes she moved and lay prone. With the 
toe of the shoe that was still on she began to scratch the 
stockinged other foot, and to run her toe along the 
wooden hardness of the shoe. It was rigidity versus 
■give and pliancy. Incommensurable: each foot was 
wrong, wormlike softness and stone clumsiness. The 
ungainliness of having one shoe off and one shoe on! 
And that was the way she felt all over. . . . She started, 
kicked, sat up, laughed. But madly she unlaced the 
shoe. 


[60] 


3 

Arlie had never consciously thought of herself as in 
love. Never had she spoken or whispered or thought 
the words, “I love” or “He loves.” The accumulation 
had been too profound and too swift with a pale terror 
to permit a stay, or time or room for new explicitness. 
If any question had lifted itself into the clear above the 
thick of sensation it would have been, “Will he hold me 
tonight as he did last night?” and if any plan had been 
explicitly formed it would have been one to recapture 
by place and time and w T ord, by preliminaries repeated 
as a ritual, some ecstatic gesture not of the knowledge 
but of the making of love ... a wordless moment by 
the moon. 

But the fact so clear to her the next morning, and 
growing insistent as the heat of the day soggily encom¬ 
passed her, was the perception, as she peeled the potatoes,, 
of the fact that she and Herb had indeed fought, ab¬ 
surd and unbelievable as that appeared when it was also- 
clear that there had been nothing to fight about—that 
they had been close, close (and then it was the word 
came) and more than ever “in love” with each other. 

Holding a potato above the water fully twenty seconds 
she looked through the wall at that thought, and at that 
new and personal use of the word “love.” 

“Stop your mooning,” snapped her mother, coming 
into the kitchen. 

“I ain’t mooning,” she returned, and plunged the po¬ 
tato into the murky water. All morning her thoughts 
ran far from her mother’s domestic fret of housework 
and dregs of household chatter. Again and again she 
inquired into precise causes: Had it been Herb’s desire 
for Pansy? But she herself had swiftly arranged the re¬ 
turn trip; and realizing this she tried to loosen in her¬ 
self a defiance that would refuse all future rides. Then 
she fell into a damning of Pansy, into cataloguing her 

[61] 


every defect of feature, form, voice, manner; and, with¬ 
out once glancing at the import of this, decided that it 
had been herself who had grown tired of Herb, so that 
she had tried to toss him away for Dolliver. Then she 
began to blame Dolliver for everything. 

4 

The heat of the summer relaxed its tension in the fol¬ 
lowing days, giving play to cool even currents of air. 
In the pellucid morning Arlie woke in an exhilarating 
amnesia, recalling only the minor worries, the politics of 
meals and dishes. A plan whereby to ease the day's work 
formed in her mind as she lay staring through the win¬ 
dow at the placid haze in the sky. As she dressed she 
sang, moved lightly, and felt her body as a strung bow 
to wing her through the day. She did not think of what 
had lately been. She found a release untouched by dis¬ 
organizing memory, and in that release she had the bene¬ 
fit of contrast without its penalty; it was as if the op¬ 
posed colors of her moods were heightening the present 
one—only the darker color and all its content were for¬ 
gotten. Life fell about her as a light; in this she moved 
and was of it, glad of each present and subtle flavor 
of the moment. Mopping the kitchen floor she wrung 
the rags with even a joy of energy, wondering as she did 
so “what was in her” that she accomplished this messy 
work so painlessly: it slipped away behind her and van¬ 
ished with such precision into the perfect result. All her 
life was fair and open, immune to all but happy possibil¬ 
ity. She knew she was going to sing again, and looked 
at her mother out in the chicken yard, and heard her 
mother’s voice but as another of the clackings and gut¬ 
turals there, when, her mother turning, she saw the fret 
at work again on the achingly familiar face. Crashing 
through the high walls of her mood came Herb, Pansy, 

[62] 


Dolliver, and peace sank to lethargy. The mop was be¬ 
draggled and mousey, the mop water nauseous, the re¬ 
mainder of the work a dirty task. 

But with the evening release came again when she 
wandered through the garden, tasting the coolness. Now 
it was a release into a distant sadness, a melancholy ex¬ 
isting between pale stars and the warm earth. Earlier 
she had been sexless, and the glimpse of her mother had 
made her again a girl. The crickets sang their treble, 
and the shrill palpitation worked her on toward some 
subdued climax. A smell of the thick garden, the close 
smell of new milk from the barn across the pasture hung 
on the mild air. In the west the evening was colored 
with almost imperceptible coral above the submerging 
earth. It would be gone, and all this sad, new, strange 
quiet of happiness. All would be gone. . . . 

Her mother was talking with her father in the kitchen. 
She must go in, and leave outside whatever had been 
there with her. 

Tears came to her eyes. She must go in. . . . Yes, 
she was going, going to bed in sudden wretchedness, 
caught and held in the whirl of dissatisfaction, humbled 
and irritable with shapeless desire. 

When Herb came the next night without foreword— 
as if he had rounded if not the same curves at least to 
the same destination as she—Arlie waited only until they 
had passed the last house in town before she threw her¬ 
self upon him and cried, “O Herb, be quick!” 

5 

Hours later Herb’s automobile was climbing a hill ten 
miles south of town. For the moment, as if they shared 
the labor of the car, the occupants were silent, but with 
the crest of the hill Pansy broke into chatter. Arlie was 
slouched in the opposite corner of the seat, her face taut 

[63] 


as she watched Herb in the front seat with Dolliver by 
his side. He was there as if she had sent him there, 
away from her. 

“A crazy stunt I’d call it, you and me riding back here. 
Lots of fun, ain’t it? My God!” Pansy said. 

In answer Arlie sank lower. 

“Lots of fun, huh! What kind of ideas you get in 
that head of yours, anyway?” 

“Oh, be still,” Arlie answered. “I want to think.” 

“Think! Good God! This ain’t no time to think. 
You done some damn’ poor thinking a while ago if it’s 
bothering you so much now. Why, Herb’ll walk right 
away from you if you treat him that way. He ain’t got 
nothing to do now but take you home.” 

“Shut your face, Pansy, you make me sick.” This 
time Arlie sat up. Pansy looked at her quizzically for 
a moment, then moved over to put an arm around her. 

“Look here, kid,” she murmured, “I’m not handing 
you any bull. I know how you feel. I just don’t want 
you to throw Herb away. I—” 

Arlie twitched free. “I know what I’m doing. Just 
let me alone.” Pansy retreated. 

The car hummed on under the late moonlight, which 
threw gray pallor on Arlie’s face. Her lips were thinned 
with pressure, she felt deadness of weight and slack 
inertia in her legs and body, and looked dully at the 
familiar hands that were so strangely hers—a mystery of 
ownership that involved her whole body, which was so 
comprehendingly alive and yet static. 

Further back in the night she had been different, wildly 
talkative and insistently near Herb, urging on him by 
her touch, knowing and not knowing, a quickness toward 
regions of bright formless desire. It had been confus¬ 
edly precipitated in humiliation and unaccomplishing pain. 
Desire, forming, had blunted into words, into protest. 

[64] 


Relapse and breathing. Silence, low voices quickening 
nearer, movement, and they were in the car. 

Pansy had stopped talking and the enormous shadows 
of the hills flew past. 

She was home, sunk in the pit of black unknowing 
hours, whence she emerged slowly and forgetfully. The 
day was clouded for her with enormous shadows of the 
night, of the hills. Familiarities talked at her through 
the morning and afternoon but she did not hear; she was 
enclouded in memory of imperfection, of unaccomplish¬ 
ment. Then night darkened over her alone with him. 
In the silence beneath the trees they were with them¬ 
selves, free, alone, complete—the stars dreaming closer, 
their pulsations cleared of pain. 

6 

A morning later, in her clumsy loose percale, she 
jammed through the housework, thankful only that her 
mother had not noticed how little she had eaten at break¬ 
fast. Food was a punishment, pulp to be taken and hor¬ 
ribly swallowed. Her father had looked at her plate, 
then at her, but he had said nothing. 

After dinner she stood by the window a moment, look¬ 
ing toward town. Shortly, thanks to the drudgery of 
the morning, she could go to her own room to nap, to 
think, to mull it over and over. Toward that all her 
conscious work had been directed, toward some muggy 
interval of freedom. 

But as she listened to her father and mother she knew 
suddenly that she was not going to throw herself on her 
bed to think or to dream marvellous escapes from Coon 
Falls. She had thrown herself into routine, and routine 
had carried her across the crevasse of thought. She was 
even becoming interested in what her father was saying: 

[ 65 ] 


“So I told him he couldn’t expect no treatment differ¬ 
ent from nobody else. ‘I don’t know why your box ain’t 
come/ I said, ‘and I can’t do no more’n I am to find 
it.’ ” 

“That’s right. Don’t take none of his lip, Oliver. 
Thinks he owns the town.” 

“Well, far as that goes he damn’ near does.” 

“Was that old man Wharton, pa?” 

“Yeh. Where’s my hat?” 

“Good-bye, pa,” Arlie called after him. 

“So long, Arlie. . . . Think I’m going to Chicago, do 
you?” he said from the front door before he slammed it 
shut. On the walk he turned to grin broadly at the 
vanishing smile she sent him. Turning back to kitchen 
realities she found the sick vacancy mounting in her breast 
again. 

To overcome it she worked desperately at the dishes 
and went to her room. There she tried not even to 
glance at the bed, for it would mean an hour—hours—of 
wretched bodily fuss and alternate twist of mind and 
torpor. And just as energetically as she looked away 
from the furniture of her room did she try to look 
away from disturbing memories and forecast. Swiftly 
she must throw herself into something that would demand 
that she talk, not think. She spent the afternoon with 
Belle Ritchie discussing the approach of school. 

When she came home her thoughts flitted from twig 
to twig of gossip and busied themselves with plans for 
her last year of high school and for clothes. Only at night 
after a visit to the Bijou, when she lay on her bed cen¬ 
tral in the hostile silence, did she realize how successfully 
she had withstood all that pressed upon her. For a mo¬ 
ment more she was able to push back her thoughts, and 
to heed only the flecks and gnat-lines on the water- 
smooth surface of the silence. Then silence broke. 


[ 66 ] 


CHAPTER VI 


GRENDEL 

I 

The evening before school opened Arlie and Belle spent 
on the Gelston front steps, talking. 

“Ma said I had to make my old serge do this year,” 
Arlie said as they settled down. “But with those new 
collars and cuffs I guess it’ll look all right, maybe . . .” 

“Yes, sure it will. But you know, kid, I just couldn't 
wear mine again. Like a looking glass it was.” 

. . . “Belle, you been with Jake much lately?” 

“Once or twice is all. But say, you sure made an aw¬ 
ful hit with that Shuman. They say he’s dead gone on 
you.” 

“Oh, I don’t know”—with diffidence. “I have had a 
lot of fun this summer, though. More’n you have, I bet, 
even if you did go to the lakes.” 

“Yes, but you don’t know what I did at the lakes.” 
Belle’s laugh implied dark secrets. 

“Ye-es,” Arlie responded. “I bet you didn’t do 
nothing more’n go in swimming and ride the roller¬ 
coaster, and giggle every time a fellow winked at you. 
I guess I know you, Belle Ritchie.” 

Belle sobered to petulance. “Yes, and I guess you 
don’t either. Just because I don’t cut up the way you do 
around home is no sign. Besides, who was the little in¬ 
nocent the night of the Fourth?” 

Arlie remained silent. It would have been so easy 

[67] 


to crush Belle completely, as the fear internally gnawing 
told her. 

Yet for a moment even the fear was stilled in the 
superiority that flooded her while she let the adverse point 
be scored. And again was sick with dread. 

“You needn’t think,” Belle went on, “that ’cause I don’t 
get people talking about me that I don’t have no good 
times.” 

“You say people talk about me?” 

“Course they do. You can’t run around with that 
Pansy Merkle without having people talk.” 

“What’s the matter with her?”—faintly. 

“Well, folks say she’s tough, awful tough.” 

“They—they don’t say /’m tough, do they?” 

“N—no. Not yet, but I bet they do if you keep on 
with Pansy and that gang.” 

“I don’t go with Pansy. I go with Herb. Anyway 
I did, though I ain’t seen him lately.” 

“I thought you was with him night before last. You 
told me you was going.” 

“Well, I didn’t.” That had been only an excuse. She 
had had too much of Belle, and had longed to be by her¬ 
self, to fight the grisly intangible battle, as if by much 
fighting she could advance against the invisible elements 
with which she was engaged. Awkward now—but it 
didn’t matter. Little did, except one thing. “I guess,” 
she suddenly spurted, “that all that’s the matter with you 
is that you been left out of some high old times.” 

“I guess it is not” Belle rejoined. “I have times a lot 
better’n yours.” 

“Oh, do you!” 

“Yes I do, and—” Belle rose. 

“O kid, don’t go, not yet.” Arlie clutched at her. “I 
don’t want to be alone. I mean not now, just before 
school starts. Let’s not argue, kid. I didn’t mean to 

[ 68 ] 


fight. I guess I was just sorta wanting a new serge, like 
yours. That’s all. Come on and stay.” 

When Belle left at ten Arlie went up to bed imme¬ 
diately. It would be a great day—tomorrow. It would be 
just a month tomorrow, too, since her last period. But 
the infinitesimals of chatter had so accumulated in 
visible points of interest that she was really attached to 
hope again, and a bodily depression, an irritability, so 
worked in her, or she fancied they so worked, that hope 
might be surety at any moment. The thought so buoyed 
her that effortlessly she went upstairs, and then sank in 
an instant’s torpor because she felt so good, but the tor¬ 
por was itself a reassurance; and so the circle ranged un¬ 
til she went to sleep, her last thought being that she 
might waken to know, gloriously and in a new flame 
of purpose and life to know, that she was indubitably 
sick. 


3 

The morning sunlight promised a hot day. Wearing 
the refurbished serge was put off for a time—that was 
Arlie’s first reflection as she opened her eyes to the silent 
brightness of her room. Then she remembered. Still, 
later she might know; it was too early. Noon marked the 
exact middle of the day. Anxiety could be put off until 
then. She gave herself to the preliminary nervous delight 
of the first morning of school, dressing with meticulous 
delicacy, as if an indefinite series of brushings, pats, and 
readjustments could somehow transform the very texture 
and cut of her clothes. 

At school she received her books and assignments as 
mere things. Always in the back of her mind was build¬ 
ing a huge significance about the high noon hour when 
all this would be over; but oddly, as the significance piled 
upon itself she forgot its context; it became an event, 

[69] 


a bright, meaningless, sun-filled climax. She fretted, im¬ 
patient for noon to come, until that hour became only 
a mark to be passed on the road nowhither. 

She chattered with her classmates, sometimes in twos, 
in threes, in whole groups. In class she jotted down as¬ 
signments mechanically and emerged to mingle with the 
gayest as they flocked down the long, dark halls of the 
high school. Then they were all back in the assembly 
room with its scarred desks, bust of Longfellow, and a 
cast of Diana. The principal, Old Budlong, a tall blond 
with high forehead and small chin, was complimenting* 
them on the excellent beginning they had made on what 
he hoped would be their last year in the old building. 
Then they were pushing and scrambling through the 
doors, out to the diverging streets and separate houses. 
In the push and thrust of the exit and in the noisy gabble 
on the way home Arlie had so completely immersed her¬ 
self that it was not until she had left the last group for 
the last lonely block that she realized noon had passed. 

4 

She flung herself into the house and sank down on a 
dining-room chair. 

“I’m not going back to school, ma,” she announced. 

“Oh, aren’t you!” Her mother appeared in the kitchen 
doorway with a tea-towel and dish in hand. “Now you 
can just get that notion plumb out of your head and help 
me with these dishes. Phil’ll be along right away and 
dead hungry too.” 

“I’ll help all you want, but ma, I’m not going back. 
I’m sick of it. What good’s it do me?” 

“Shut your face. You’re going back and you know 
you are. What would your pa say?” 

Phil burst in. “Dinner ready? Come on, now, let’s 
have a little speed. I got to get right back.” 

[70] 


“You don’t have to get back no more’n I do,” Arlie 
offered. 

“Oh, don’t I!” 

“Well, why do you? Your school don’t start before 
anybody else’s.” 

“Oh hell, shut up! You make me sick. Any one’d 
think you run the school.” 

“I could run it a lot better’n you, at any rate. If 
you’re in such a hurry grab that dish towel and help out 
a bit.” 

“Now Arlie,” Mrs. Gelston cut in, “you stop jawing 
Phil and tend to business. You’d jaw the life out of 
anybody. What’s Phil done to make you jump on him 
so?” 

“Nothing. He never does. That’s it.” 

“Ya—what if I don’t? I guess anyway I don’t go on 
a lot of joy-rides with a bunch of toughs like Shuman 
and his gang.” 

rt They’re not tough. They’re—” 

“Aw, get out. Think I’s hatched yesterday? Ain’t a 
fellow in town don’t know what that Pansy Merkle is. 
And I’ll bet you’ll be damn’ near as tough as she is, if the 
hot weather lasts.” 

As Phil spoke these last words Arlie’s face grew hard 
and sullen. She stopped wiping a plate to step forward. 

“Now just stop that, Phil, and Arlie too. It’s no way 
to act, the first day of school.” But Arlie did not hear 
her mother. With an awkward overhead sweep of her left 
hand she had thrown the plate crashing against the wall 
where Phil’9 head had been, and had run, choking, to 
her room. 

“My God, ma,” Phil said, straightening from his 
crouching position, “wha’d’you know about that!” 

“Arlie !” his mother called. “Arlie !” 

“Gee, if that’d ever hit me it’d cut my head open or an 
eye out.” Then anger rose above the swift bewilderment. 

[7i] 


“My God, ma, look! Why the damn’ little fool mighta 
killed me! Honest, look! That dish is in fifty pieces.” 
Speculatively he eyed one of the pieces, as if calculat¬ 
ing by a minute inspection of a fragment the injury the 
whole plate might have inflicted. 

Mrs. Gelston was going through the dining-room on 
her way upstairs, untying her apron as she went. “I’ll 
just see about this myself,” she was muttering. Phil 
continued on a kitchen chair, contemplatively fitting one 
piece to another, his brown hair falling forward to accent¬ 
uate by duplication the gibbous curve of his nose. 

5 

Despite the many trips of her mother to the locked 
bedroom door, the tattoo of talk without and silence 
within—except for an occasional creak from the bed- 
springs—Arlie held to her determination not to return to 
school until it was indeed too late. 

At length Oliver came home and his wife mechan¬ 
ically set forth the cold remains of dinner, while he lis¬ 
tened to her until his silence became morose. Without 
having uttered a word he slouched away. 

Whereupon Arlie appeared in the kitchen doorway. 
“Has pa gone?” she asked. 

“You heard him, didn’t you?” her mother asked. 
“Why didn’t you come down? What’s the matter with 
you anyway? Why, you pretty near killed Phil. If that 
plate h^d hit him it mighta split his head or put out an 
eye. What’s wrong with you?” 

“I don’t know. I don’t want to talk, ma. Is there 
anything left to eat?” 

“I’d think you wouldn’t want to talk! But suppose 
you just sweep up that china and put it in the barrel. 
Then we can see about eating.” 

Returning from the barrel with an empty dust pan 

[72] 


Arlie remarked quietly: “I’m sorry I done it, ma. I 
don’t know what got into me.” She sat down by the 
confusion of the kitchen table, resting her face in her 
hands and staring with tired eyes at the greasy, small 
chaos ahead of her. 

“I’d think you didn’t know what got into you,” her 
mother went on. “All Phil was trying to do was tell 
you the truth about your own goings-on. Just what I 
been going to tell you myself, only I hadn’t got around to 
it. You been with that Shuman gang too much, do you 
hear? And you ain’t going to be with ’em no more. 
I guess I know when it’s time to stop, even if you don’t.” 

Arlie turned to look at the yellow flesh and nervous 
lines of her mother’s face. There was no anger in Ar- 
lie’s expression now, only a pained acceptance, the pas¬ 
sivity that follows tears. But her eyes were brilliant, 
and the muscles in her thin white arms showed in taut 
relief. “You never said nothing, ma, after that first 
time, when you found how much money he had.” 

“I guess his money don’t make no difference with me. 
I’m looking for other things than money, I can tell you, 
and you better be, too—staying away from school like 
this!” 

“I can’t stand it to go back, ma. Besides, you see, I 
ain’t well.” 

Mrs. Gelston turned around. “Oh, so that’s it! Well, 
I was wondering. Huh! It never took you that way 
before.” 

Arlie rose to her feet with an exaggerated unsteadi¬ 
ness. “I guess I’ll go up and lie down a bit.” 

“Humph. It’s sort of convenient for you, if I do say 
it.” 

In the doorway Arlie turned. “I’ll—111 work if you 
say so. I’m sorry I been so mean.” And for two hours 
she worked, saying no more than she had to; and re¬ 
leased at last went to her own room. There she sat by 

[73] 


her window inert, seeing across the green-filled distance 
the students on their way home. 

If only she could go home as they, with no burdens but 
chores and lessons, and no lying required to ease the 
hardening of a disastrous future, which she could hardly 
face in prospect without the thought of actually living 
it inch by inch and hour by hour, through a gray ac¬ 
cumulation of aching days. Momentarily the months 
swept dizzyingly around her, an abyss of time. 

She was only a shell of herself with fragile arms in 
which no strength lived. Where would she find the en¬ 
ergy even to lift a chair, to shove it? How was it she 
had been able to sweep up the china, to wash and wipe 
the dishes, to put them away, to sweep the dining-room 
and kitchen, and finish the ironing her mother had left? 
Never again could she do that. How could she? 
Her chest emptied, her breathing stopped—infinite las¬ 
situde in which there was no moving, nothing 
but heaviness and a leering round of hostile faces, 
hostile as silence . . . wagging tongues, from which 
she could run nowhere. She threw herself on the 
bed, seeking the cleansing relief of tears, but no tears 
came. 

It was a dismal supper that she ate; and she dragged 
through the after-supper work forcing each movement, 
letting plates slip that she could not hold; and at each 
slip she started in memory and fear of more outbursts. 
It seemed an ironic good fortune that she broke nothing. 

6 

“I guess you’d better go back to school, girl,” her father 
had said next morning at breakfast. 

“All right, pa,” she replied docilely, but without rais¬ 
ing her eyes to his, “I’ll go—today, anyhow.” 

[74] 


“Yeh, you go today. Then we’ll see, maybe. Think 
it over, sort of.” 

As she walked to school, avoiding the streets on which 
she might meet Belle, she slowly dragged and pushed 
herself into a conviction that her condition was mere 
delay, pure irregularity, and nothing else. Maurine Le 
Vitre had once gone three months, it was reported. Ir¬ 
regularity—of course! She almost skipped along the 
walk, and entered the ephemeral conspiracies with such 
enthusiasm that twice she was “bawled out.” 

At noon she started an impromptu dance—a forbid¬ 
den thing—and before the dance was checked had worked 
herself into such a heat of bewilderment that when she 
flopped into her seat at assembly, brushing the damp hair 
from her forehead and flashing at Arnold Tieje, whose 
arms she had just left, glances quick with the hot after¬ 
glow of their intimacy, she could hardly find poise or stay 
in the hot dance of her mind. To take her books and 
march sedately to English VII was a joke, a strange 
punishment, even a reward, or nothing at all—except 
forty-five minutes of listening to questions about Woden 
and Thunor (what were they, animals?) and watching 
clouds ride above the green fringe of trees along the 
window sill, and hearing infrequent rumblings from the 
street. 

Miss Haggerty, the new teacher of English, was mak¬ 
ing weird marks on the board, and a titter succeeded the 
silence with which the first marks had been greeted: 

‘$y he Sone feond ofercwom, 

gehnsegde helle gast.” 

Below these she wrote: 

“Therefore he overcame the fiend, 

Subdued the ghost of hell.” 

“Oh hell!” murmured Arnold Tieje. Difficultly Ar- 

[ 75 ] 


lie controlled herself and looked around at the rest of the 
class. A ripple of giggling widened. Miss Haggerty 
turned, blushing. The class sobered to a look of pain¬ 
ful innocence. 

“If you can control yourselves,” Miss Haggerty said, 
“we’ll go on with the lesson. If not, we’ll let Arnold, 
and any one else who needs it, time to become acquainted 
with such unfamiliar words as ‘hell.’ I’m sure it must 
be new to you, Arnold, or it wouldn’t disturb you so.” 

The stir throughout the class confirmed the squelching 
of Arnold, and a propitiatory air of interest was as¬ 
sumed. The hour passed, and Arlie pushed out to a 
study period with the sinewy rhythm of the lines strong 
in echo in her ears: 

“Therefore he overcame the fiend, 

Subdued the ghost of hell.” 

She gave them no setting beyond their own gray 
suggestive aura, and the tags of her attention played with 
the clouded day and grim waters that Miss Haggerty’s 
few words had somehow made visible before her. 
“Bay wolf.” Queer name. She turned to her text: 
Beowulf. A pause in the day’s hilarity, given to that 
name, and to Grendel’s—a crunching name. No sunshine 
in those days. But the textbook’s short account left her 
cheated, her hunger for the malignant details unstilled. 
When the book was closed the vast fight ground on above 
her, and in waters sinking to far green slimy levels from 
her feet—all hazed by remoteness, clear only as a sud¬ 
denly remembered, troubling dream. 

That night, after a long period of work, for she had 
been extraordinarily willing to accommodate, she pounded 
her body viciously, in torment, and choked herself into 
a sleep wherein Beowulf and Grendel again fought mon¬ 
strously in a green writhen pallor of upper air, tearing 
her as they tore themselves. 

[76] 


7 

Late in starting for school the next day she loitered 
along an empty street where only the sunshine was busy 
among the tangled and fallen gardens. The school bell 
rang distantly, and seemed not only remote but of an¬ 
other realm, in which immature people went about seek¬ 
ing ends she could not understand. A lush rank thicket, 
springing up overnight, had shut her outside of a closed 
circle of aimless fun and absurd studies. When the bell 
stopped ringing she knew that she was not going to 
school. 

After a time she found the railroad track, walked the 
rail, wandered on. There was a straightness about the 
track, a steadiness; it went somewhere, to other places 
than Coon Falls, yet like Coon Falls. But it didn’t 
change things, it just moved them. She changed things, 
or things changed her. She wasn’t going just some¬ 
where. There would be different; how different she 
couldn’t tell. But it was impossible to stay in school; 
she’d leave home first. Get a job—she was old enough. 
She could take care of herself. 

The tracks gleamed onward around a steep bank of 
clay, raw yellow in the sunlight. On top of the bank 
rose a clump of trees'. Scrambling with sinking feet up 
the crumbling clay bank she lay down in the open light, 
and the spotted shade flowed and vacillated on her check¬ 
ered dress. Sunlight warmed her, and she felt lulled 
with a new inrush of vigor. She was strong with the 
white rush of clouds across a full sky, and a wind blow¬ 
ing. A train whistled and clamored past, the earth be¬ 
neath her throbbing with confusion. . . . Moment of 
strength and peace, with life beyond mere vigor lying 
invisible around the corners. 

On her return, a little before noon, she passed the 
Bijou. As she did so she recalled that Gran’pa Tritch- 
ler’s daughter, Mrs. Somers, had been taken to Des 

[77] 


Moines for an operation the week before. Somers him¬ 
self, with rolled-up shirt sleeves and straw hat set far 
back on his shiny “lay-back” of hair, was putting a ban¬ 
ner in the lobby frames. Arlie did not know Som¬ 
ers, who had been in town only a few months, but 
she had known his wife, Jessie Tritchler, who had 
been a Senior in high school when she had been a 
Freshman. 

“Oh, Mr. Somers,”—she turned impulsively—“say, 
how’s Jessie now? I heard she was pretty bad off.” 

“Well . . .” Somers settled his hat more firmly on his 
head. “She ain’t none too well, that’s a fact. I’ll have 
to go back this afternoon, I guess. The doctors said 
when I left she’d pull through all right, but I got a 
telegram this morning calling me back.” 

“Well . . . I just hope she does pull through all right, 
and you tell her I said so. I’m awfully sorry.” 

“I’ll tell her all right, but—” Here Somer’s face broke 
to a grin that displayed what impressed Arlie as very 
handsome and regular teeth. “But who’ll I tell her said 
so? I’m not sure I got you placed. I see so many, 
you know.” 

“I? Oh, I’m Arlie Gelston. She’ll remember me.” 

Somers tipped his hat. “I’m pleased to meet you, Miss 
Gelston. I seen you before and wondered who you were, 
but I never heard your name.” This while he shook 
hands with her for as long as he spoke. 

“I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Somers. And you tell 
Jessie what I said, won’t you?” She dropped his hand, 
which she had shaken with a valiance lost in his big 
warm grasp, and backed away, stumbling a little, and 
then walking quickly to pass off her confusion. 

Their meeting had been more protracted than she had 
intended when she first spoke, yet except for the stumble 
it had come off rather well. Had she been too positive 
that Jessie would remember her? She was not so sure. 

[ 78 ] 


Still . . . Jessie used to speak pleasantly when she sold 
tickets, and she had gone to the Bijou often enough. 

And then through the noon hour she twisted and 
turned and stretched the idea she had found. It might 
be her chance ... a job. How such a job could alter 
conditions she did not consider. 

The train that Somers would probably take left at two- 
thirty in the afternoon. He would be much easier, much 
nicer, to deal with than Gran pa Tritchler. 

At one-thirty she stood at the back of the ticket booth 
watching Tritchler shift his small blue eyes in their lank 
sockets as his gaze drooled over her from head to foot. 
All the while he chewed tobacco, and his bent form 
seemed larger in the half light in which he stood. 

“I guess she’ll do,” he answered Somers, and rolled his 
quid into the other cheek. “We got to have somebody 
if I run the machine, that’s sure. . . . Won’t pay more’n 
fifty cents a night.” He shuffled away, mumbling. 

Somers began to explain her duties in detail; and then 
was talking, she found as she recovered from a relapse 
into a dizzy moment, about the moving picture business: 
“It ain’t now what it might be or what it’s going to be. 
It’s going to grow. We’re going to see an even bigger 
movement in it. It’s bound to grow. People have been 
getting the habit in the past few years; children have been 
growing up with it. Now we can begin to cash in on 
it. . . . Huh? Yes, be around by seven or a little be¬ 
fore. He’s likely to be touchy tonight. Always worries 
him to operate. Can’t change reels fast enough, and 
won’t have two machines. Then they get restless and he 
goes to pieces, balls things up right.” 

On the way home she tried to plan some manipulation 
of Phil that would postpone his inevitable report of her 
absence from school, though he might not notice it for 
a day or two. Even two or three days would let her so 
establish herself that it would be harder for her parents 

[79] 


to insist on her quitting ... if the job should hold be¬ 
yond that time. 

8 

She had formed a habit which she did not recognize, 
though its use was constant. Walks were planned, kit¬ 
chen work assailed, energetic gossipings with her mother 
pushed on and on to the last wisp of trivial interest— 
all to withhold her mind from a terrified contemplation 
of herself and her baby. The stratagem might work for 
ten minutes, half an hour, only to be followed, especially 
when she was alone, by a complete reversal in which she 
was hurled headlong to the lowest depth of her misery, 
and the blackness of the future poured over her. 

Getting the job had been only a more carefully planned 
unit of this half unconscious strategy, but one that was 
about to fail, since she found herself going to the Bijou 
that night with disheartened steps. 

Ordinarily Tritchler himself took the tickets which 
Jessie Somers sold, but tonight he had installed a little 
pale-faced niece who was to “get to see the show all I 
want” she told Arlie, for her work that week. Arlie 
was glad she was not to be paid in that way. She needed 
money. Perhaps Somers had helped. . . . She rather 
liked Somers. It was too bad his wife was sick. 

For the first hour she was kept busy with her change 
and tickets; shortly the figures began to set themselves 
in her mind, and the making of change tended to become 
automatic. Toward nine o’clock the people came more 
infrequently, and she had opportunity to count the money 
that filled the cash box, taking pride in the amount as if 
she were somehow responsible for it. 

Then she was free to realize her new vantage point. 
The tawdry front of the Bijou, the bronze-colored mar¬ 
quee, and the great pale coppery light buzzing contin¬ 
uously she knew already from her many visits but it was 

[80] 


not in just this way, through plate glass, that she had 
known the ‘‘Home Bakery” in its white false-front 
building, with dim white curtains across its lower win¬ 
dows, and the Globe Furniture Store’s permanent dis¬ 
play of mission furniture. 

The people began to leave, but she did not watch them, 
and hardly replied to the high school girls who stopped 
to question her. Soon all the crowd had gone and 
Gran pa Tritchler, after putting out the house lights, had 
come for the money. She was free at last to start home, 
and went a block with Gran’pa’s niece, Debbie Kittifer, 
who chattered palely of her teacher until they parted. 

It was a windless, moonless night with only a few 
patterns of the stars visible, a night in itself of vague, 
cool depression that stole keenly into her as she specu¬ 
lated on what she should tell her mother. The truth 
would probably be best; she could say she was going to 
school, too, if only Phil wouldn’t give her away. 

Her account passed off with only a little perfunctory 
questioning that was easily put aside: her work wasn’t 
hard, and she could study in the booth after eight; and 
it would mean three dollars a week, or twelve a month, 
if it lasted. 

Dullness . . . not heavy but irremediable, possessed 
her as she undressed, dullness without even a rift of 
pain. Even her suffering seemed to be dying, to 
leave . . . days upon days, an enormous tick-tock of day 
and night, day and night, until— 

She sat upright in bed, sprang to the window, paced 
wildly. She had not thought really of the baby itself, 
but only of the blank disgrace, people talking. . . . She 
would have to care for it, pick it up, nurse it, change it, 
rock it off to sleep. She, who couldn’t find energy to 
live—couldn’t, at least, when she thought of it or tried 
to live through her work in advance, knowing how all the 
time her mind would be twisting the harsh possibilities. 

[81] 


The baby. . . . “Oh, my God, my God!”—The cry she 
instantly tried to change to prayer, trying to shut out the 
fact that she had sworn when if ever she needed the help 
of God, and a faint whisper echoed away as she knelt 
that God could not be so cheated, and this even as she 
started her prayer, “O my God, my God—help me, and 
take this—don’t let it—’’ She choked. The echo re¬ 
bounded : she couldn’t cheat God that way; she had 
sworn, and she might, later on, need His help even more. 
Better wait to pray. She must fight it out herself this 
time. 

And why, of all things to do, had she placed herself in 
the most conspicuous place in town, where everybody 
would be coming? Was she a complete idiot? Couldn’t 
she think at all? Yet the counter might hide her. . . . 
How far up had it come? 

Again she struck at her body, flailed it with her arms, 
hammered with her fists—the body that was bearing her 
on, despite herself, like a car whose steering wheel is 
broken and can’t be stopped—carrying her, chained in¬ 
exorably to it, off the road into miserable places, out 
from a precipice. . . . 

And her job wouldn’t take her away from Coon Falls. 
Why had she wanted it? It would all be here, here. . . . 
Not God lived above, but something greater than God: 
a shapeless Grendel, grayly infinite, that willed blindly, 
deaf to all appeal, which even God could not persuade 
because He could not find, though it was poisonous 
everywhere, and she its latest victim. She was sobbing 
on her knees beside the bed, choking her sobs back to a 
wrench of silence, till only an occasional quiver dis¬ 
turbed the folds of her muslin nightgown. 


[82] 


CHAPTER VII 


CAUSE AND EFFECT 

I 

A hope that she was not pregnant had worn itself out 
when Friday came, and by degrees she was inuring her¬ 
self to fear; then the iciness of this began palpably to go, 
leaving a featureless chill in which she moved forget¬ 
fully, recognizing dully a new medium in which she was 
henceforth to live, and to which it was well fully to ac¬ 
custom herself. Meekly, futilely, she tried to part the 
days ahead of her, to see the darkest face that time might 
hold, and often that face was so black, beyond all pos¬ 
sible reality, that she recoiled convulsively to the mo¬ 
ment in which she lived, neglecting all the intermediate 
stuffs out of which her life must inevitably be shaped. 

Often during that week she found herself on the 
bank of the railroad, where she had gone on her first 
day of truancy. 

In the hollow of the rise she would lie among the 
golden-rod, rising in stately delicacy around her; heavily 
her mind would drift among such items as she could 
clearly see. Then, in stabbing protests of fear, she 
would grip her body, good yet treacherous, that was float¬ 
ing her so irretrievably away from all that she had 
known and all that she had endured. She wanted to 
clutch the whole of her past to her, and to grasp at it 
even with hands that must slip off. 

Herb she had seen only through a vision wavering 

[83] 


with pain that distorted his face and placed him at in¬ 
accessible distance. More unreal than ever did he seem 
on Friday morning as she lay in bed, when there came 
an inexplicable clearing of her mood, and a steadying of 
her vision, that let her see Herb as he really had been, 
and was! Herb, the father of her child, Herb—her 
husband? Weights slipped away, weights that must have 
been physical, so light did she feel as she suddenly sat 
up in bed and laughed, “My husband!” Of course he 
would marry her; that was always done, or almost al¬ 
ways. La Vona Romkey’s sister had married that way. 
The whole town knew it, though people didn’t particu¬ 
larly let on; and her baby had been born only four 
months after they were married. If Herb could arrange 
it quickly, her—their—child could be born only a week or 
two early, and that might be only natural, an accident. 

Just because she was the one who did all the dirty 
work was no sign that she couldn’t be helped by any one 
—by Herb, who loved her. Did he love her? Of 
course. ... Yet it had been a sign, all the miserable 
while. Because she did the work Herb had been com¬ 
pletely out of it. She hadn’t once thought of marrying 
him. But now, all that she had to do was tell him . . . 
to tell him. 

In this onrush she totally accepted her pregnancy, with 
no reservation of hope that her condition was mere ir¬ 
regularity. After that she never hoped again; there was 
regret, but seldom the regret that mottles dreamfully into 
a contradiction of reality. 

Breakfast over, she went at once to the Bijou to write 
her first letter to Herb. She did not care to trust the 
most flavorless message to a post card. 

2 

Her job at the Bijou now included sweeping and 
cleaning and dusting, work which she had obtained from 

[ 84 ] 


Somers on his return and over Tritchler’s objections. 
For this she was to receive fifty cents more a day, six 
dollars a week. That, Arlie had thought, would soften 
the shock of her having left school; she hoped that it 
would let her off with only a slight jar as the fact col¬ 
lided with her mother’s authority, for the sum was not 
too small a fraction of her father’s salary. 

This morning it was very convenient to have a retreat 
where she might be undisturbed as she thought out and 
wrote her letter: 

“Dear Herb, 

“I have been wondering why you havent been around 
since that last ride we took for I have been wanting to see 
you very much. I have something to tell you that I don’t 
want to write, it’s too important. Call me up and let me 
know when you will come. I’m working now at the Bijou at 
night and have quit school, so don’t come at night unless 
it’s Sunday, when I can go if you come. Or I could go 
late at night after the show’s over i*f you can’t come Sun¬ 
day, only I could not go for long then. 

“But let me know and come soon. Ifs very important. 

“Lots of love, 

“Arlie Gelston.” 

She had questioned the close for some time, wondering 
if it might be considered “too fresh”; then she had 
thought: “Well, he’s going to be my husband, and I 
ought to love him, even if I don’t. But I do.” With 
that, she sealed the letter. 

“It’s just a matter of days now,” she told herself on 
her return from the post office, and so decided to tell her 
parents that evening of her quitting school. Telling 
them herself might help. Certainly it would be better 
than letting them discover it by accident, and by acci¬ 
dent which might fatally distort the story she was build¬ 
ing, partly of fact, and which, if only they would take 

[ 85 ] 


it as she planned to offer it, would permit the event to 
pass off without collision. 

All morning she worked in the great empty room of 
the theatre; the very emptiness ministered to her in so 
far as it was a shelter that she possessed alone, that was 
hers, the one place other than her bedroom that partook 
of her as she of it, for little by little, as she made the 
rounds of the seats, the room did take on a vague flavor, 
a smell, of ownership. At noon she walked home 
through the rain almost happy, and her happiness was 
more precious and quietly held because on every side 
it sank toward danger. 


3 

Telling her parents, she found that night, was not at 
all the deft manipulation of words and persons she had 
so facilely enacted in her .imagination. The whole fam¬ 
ily had been seated at the supper table and the first si¬ 
lence of beginning the meal was on them. On that 
silence she ventured forth. 

“You know that serge, ma—?” 

Mrs. Gelston grunted through a full mouth. 

“I think I’ll get another collar and cuff set for it.” 

“With what?” 

“Why with the money I’m making.” 

“Mgg—that—that money ain’t going to go so far as 
you think. How you going to buy me that cut glass 
bud vase you was talking about if you buy a collar’n 
cuff set?” 

“A set won’t cost more’n half a dollar at most.” 

“Then you can’t get that vase for a week or more—” 

“Oh yes I can. I’m making more’n you think.” It 
was proceeding beautifully so far; this was an oppor¬ 
tunity she hadn’t foreseen—and so perfect! 

“More’n three dollars? Get a raise?” 

[ 86 ] 


“No—you see, it was this way. Jessie Somers had 
to go to Colfax to a sanitarium, and old man Tritchler 
and Somers are worried and need more help and 
asked me wouldn’t I help ’em out a little for a while. 
Cleaning out, it is.” (This wasn’t so big a lie, 
though of course she had gone to them herself.) 
“And I said I would. Wasn’t that all right? Wasn’t 
it, pa?” 

Mr. Gelston had appeared uninterested in the conver¬ 
sation up to this time, content merely to eat as he al¬ 
ways did, very seriously, with large movements of his 
long jaws that almost but not quite broke apart his 
pursed lips. “Hm-hmm. Guess so,” he answered. 
“When do you work? Can’t do it at night.” 

This was the moment. 

“No, of course not. And if I did it after school I 
couldn’t help ma, so—” 

“So what?” 

“So I quit school. I told you I was going to and I’ll 
have more time to help you now, ma, and I can get you 
two bud vases and do most of the work too, and—” 
She gasped for more items to throw upon her mother’s 
astonishment, to pile them on so heavily it could not rise, 
or could rise only with a flabby smile and “All right, 
Arlie.” 

“And . . .” The descending silence, proceeding from 
her inability to find the details she wanted, was already 
menacingly huge. She must shatter it! But she could 
not. . . . Her father had laid down his fork. Her 
mother’s spectacles sat awry upon her nose, and her 
mouth was open, showing a white pulp of food before 
she closed her lips and swallowed. 

“You quit school, eh, Arlie?” her father echoed. 

“You—you tell me”—her mother’s voice gathered it¬ 
self—“you tell me you quit school and didn’t say noth¬ 
ing to me!” 


[87] 



“Yes, I thought you’d like it. I’m going to buy you 
that bud vase and a hand painted china nut bowl, too. 
Ma, you wanted those for years.” 

“No you ain’t!” her father injected with a vehemence 
she had seldom heard him use. “You ain’t going to buy 
your ma no vases and painted china with what you earn 
by quitting school.” 

Mrs. Gelston had fully recovered. “Oh, she ain’t, 
ain’t she? What is she going to do, buy you chewing 
tobacco ? Huh!” 

“Yes,” Phil put in, “she quit yesterday. Ain’t been 
to school all week far’s I know.” 

“I have too.” 

“Aw, you ain’t and you know you ain’t. What’s the 
matter with you, lying that way?” 

“I’m not lying.” 

“You are—” 

“Shut up, Phil,” said Oliver, and then, to his wife: “I 
tell you that girl ain’t going to buy you no gimcrackery 
with her money. It’s her own and she’s going to do what 
she wants with it.” 

“But pa,” Arlie temporized, “if I want to get ma the 
vase and bowl, that’s doing what I want with my money, 
ain’t it?” 

“Course it is,” her mother confirmed. 

“I tell you,” Oliver’s voice rose, and he shook his 
black hair from his brilliant eyes, “I tell you she ain’t. 
Hear me, or don’t you?” 

Arlie wondered whether she had made the right play 
in aligning herself with her mother when all her sym¬ 
pathies were with her father, but the doubt was lost 
under the perception that her leaving school was being 
overlooked entirely in the crescendo of dispute. 

“You don’t need to shout,” Mrs. Gelston was saying. 
“Anybody can hear you. A block away they can.” 

“Then you ought to be able to.” Gelston’s voice was 

[ 88 ] 


louder than before. “And if you can, then shut up, and 
do as I tell you.” 

“What did you tell me?” Mrs. Gelston’s face gath¬ 
ered pugnaciously. “I couldn’t hear you tell me nothing 
for the noise you was making.” 

“Oh, you didn’t, eh? Then I’ll tell you again, and 
this time I want you to listen. I told you ” he shouted, 
his tense dark large face trembling as he leaned forward 
across his plate, “I told you she wasn’t going to buy you 
no damn’ bud vase!” Relaxing: “If you’d ever wash 
your ears you could hear a little.” With his fork he be¬ 
gan to peck hen-wise at his potatoes, and advanced a 
morsel toward his mouth, poising it to inquire in tones 
that mocked gentleness: “Hear that, did you?” 

His wife’s flaccid mouth was working. A tear glim¬ 
mered on the sallow skin beneath her spectacles. To 
Arlie’s absorbed gaze she suddenly went flabby, became 
spineless flesh, beaten upon. 

“Now, pa,” Arlie said. 

‘Shut your face!” He glared at her. Phil snickered 
and hastily filled his mouth with potato. 

“Yes, Oliver Gelston,” her mother rallied, “that’s the 
way. Yell at me. Tell me I don’t wash enough to suit 
you. Tell me the potatoes ain’t done. You ain’t done 
that yet tonight. Tell me I don’t know what work is. 
Tell me—” 

“I ain’t telling you nothing like that,” he offered, very 
mildly. “All I’m saying is that you ain’t going to have 
that girl buy you no bud vases with the first money she 
earns. She can go back to school, that’s what she can 
do. And you can shut up, that’s what you can do.” 

“Yes, shut up! That’s all you can say. Anything 
just so you don’t learn the truth about yourself.” 

“Truth, hell! Lot you know about the truth. It’s 
all you can do to get a decent meal, without worrying 
about the Truth.” 


[89] 


“I guess I get as good a meal as any one on what you 
give me to get it with. Here I scrape along on next to 
nothing and then get jawed for doing it. When I might 
have my two hired girls and go to California in the win¬ 
ter if I hadn’t been fool enough to marry you.” 

“Yes, start that Phil Yoder stuff again. You didn’t 
marry him because you couldn’t get him. That’s why. 
And then you stuck your hooks into me and I was fool 
enough to fall for it and here we are—” 

“Yes, here we are”—in a small mimicking voice. 
“Mortgage on the house and bills at the store and you 
likely to lose your job—” 

“I’m not.” 

“You are. And all this rampage because I got 
a chance to get a little something I want. Like other 
women have.” 

“Yes, and get it with blood money. Have your only 
girl quit school to buy bud vases for you! What are 
you going to put in that bud vase, cauliflower?” 

“I didn’t have her quit school. She quit herself. 
Didn’t you, Arlie ?” Arlie nodded. “See ! She quit her¬ 
self, just like I said. And yet you go raising hell 
around here.” 

“Who’s raising hell? I’m not.” 

“You are too.” 

“I’m not,” Oliver’s voice flared, and then he rose, 
swiftly kicking back his chair and walking over to his 
wife’s, where he stood shaking a long finger in her face. 
Arlie could see only his back and the futile green stripe 
in his glossy coat. “Now I want you to listen to me, 
old lady, while I tell you something for your own good. 
I’ve had just about enough of your maundering ways, 
and if you can’t get over them you can pack and get out. 
I’m going to have some peace and quiet around here. 
Get me?” 

“Fat chance,” Phil murmured, to find his father turn- 

[90] 


mg on him with a sharpened face: “Get out, you, be¬ 
fore I throw you out.” Phil’s eyes dully sent back no 
response. “Get out!” I said, and Oliver swung an 
arm at his son, who ducked and ran down the hall, slam¬ 
ming the front door behind him with such violence that 
Arlie gasped. 

That s the way. Break up the house, damn you! . . . 
Just like your son, and like your damn’ Phil Yoder. 
Christ! Many s the time I wondered if he was my son. 
How in hell do I know ? You naming him after Yoder 
and all. It’s always looked damn’ suspicious to me.” 

“Pa!” Arlie recoiled. 

“Well, you don’t know your ma as well as I do.” 

“I know her too well for that.” 

“Yes, that’s right, turn against me too.” 

“I’m not turning against you, pa . . . only I . . .” 
How was she going to hold both of them? 

Mrs. Gelston was sobbing—quiet, slow sobs with many 
tears, and the sobs hunched her shoulders forward at 
convulsively regular intervals. Then, ineffectually, she 
dabbed at her eyes with the corner of her apron. 

“Now stop that,” Gelston said. “Stop it, I said. My 
God! What are you blubbering about ? He turned to 
pace into the kitchen . . . and back. His wife’s sobs 
rose to a shriller note, when Gelston, with a quick step 
reached her and shook her shoulders. “Stop it, I tell 
you, stop it!” The sobs were choked back, rose again; 
Mrs. Gelston’s fat head, with its thin yellow hair, hobbled 
grotesquely as she was shaken, and her pendulous cheeks 
swayed. Gelston seized her throat with his lean hands 
and tightened his grip. Arlie sat stiff, breathless. Her 
mother’s face grew red and the closed eyes opened to 
appealing slits. Another sob convulsed her. 

“Stop it, I tell you. Stop it!” Gelston shrieked, shook 
her once more, and let go. “Maybe you’ll behave your¬ 
self after this,” he said. “My Christ, a crying woman!” 

[91] 



He crossed to the hall door, leaned against it, and put 
his hands in his pockets. It was a gesture of self-con¬ 
trol. 

When he began to speak again his voice was very quiet, 
pleading: “Can’t you stop that, Mamie ? What good does 
it do you? Can’t you see how nervous it’ll make you? 
Come on, now, we’ve had our little fuss. We always 
have ’em. Come on, now, stop crying.” 

As he stood before her, pleading as if he had never 
been otherwise, he melted into another perspective for 
Arlie, to whom he had always before been half a super¬ 
being, with occasional fits of irritation that had to be 
humored, yes, but still he had been a person, one of the 
more important men in the town. She saw him now, a 
loose-jointed, tense-nerved man, tangled with contradic¬ 
tions. And she knew that there was in him a wispy 
kindness, even a jocularity at times, and a protection to 
which on more than one occasion she had fled, not to be 
disappointed in the rough solace he gave. His curly 
hair fell over his high forehead; his thin nose seemed 
to project abnormally, and his nervous blue eyes were 
wild with light. Then the wildness of light, and its in¬ 
tensity, resolved into the reflection of the single unshaded 
electric bulb burning over the center of the table, and 
throwing high lights over the greasy surface of her 
mother’s hair, all that was now visible of the head 
plumped down upon the flattened arms. 

Her mother’s sobs reached a new peak of shrill¬ 
ness. 

“Oh hell!” Gelston threw the words like a last fire¬ 
cracker, swooped down on his hat with a long arm, and 
departed. 

The sobs strained upward, subsided, lifted again. Ar¬ 
lie went to her. “There, ma, don’t cry. Don’t cry, ma. 

. . . It’s all right now . . . there . . . there. . . 

[ 92 ] 


1 he shoulders under her hand twitched, as if to scare 
off the comforting hand. She got up and blundered 
through the hall into the parlor. Arlie followed and 
watched her mother drag a chair to the wide front win¬ 
dow the window from which she had peeked at Herb. 
She was only sniffling now as she watched a buggy beat 
dimly past on the road. 

“Don’t bother me, Arlie. Go on.” 

“I’m awful sorry, ma. I never saw him as bad as that 
before.” 

“He near choked me to death.” A dim voice, that 
Arlie hadn’t heard for years. 

“Gee, I was scared. ... In another minute, though, 
I’d of hit him.” 

“Another minute woulda been too late.” 

“Well, he’d never do worse’n that.” 

“Yes he would. He dragged me around the floor once. 
. . . When we lived in Acme, it was. . . . But you go 
on. You’ll be late. I’m all right—now.” 

“Sure, ma?” 

“Yes. Go on. I want to be alone.” 

Arlie went, looking back to see her mother obscurely 
framed in the front window, wiping at her eyes again. 
She shouldn’t do that ... at the front window. Arlie 
could not remember seeing her mother through that win¬ 
dow in all the years they had lived there. Surely she 
hadn’t seen her there in the best rocker. It was strange. 
Fights had torn up evenings and noons before, and many 
had been more violent, in words at least, than this one. 
But this had seemed so purposeless, so useless, and had 
ended so far from the collar and cuff set. It was al¬ 
most as if something had been for so long accumulating 
in her father and mother that they had inevitably to dis¬ 
charge it. They would have poured it bitterly out over 
anything. It had happened to be a bud vase—the one 

[93] 


that sat in the front corner of Nolte’s Jewelry Store. 

Then she saw the great light in front of the Bijou 
drop its coppery brilliance over Main Street, and knew 
that she was late. 


[94] 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE KNOWLEDGE OF TIME 

I 

Saturday’s work passed to the accompaniment of a dull 
discordant music of the thought of Herb. Her letter 
would be reaching him soon, was in the mailbox, was in 
his hands. He might come that night, timing his arrival 
with the end of the snow. She must wait till the very 
end, for he might not know that she often left soon after 
the second show started. Then she would have him 
again and be safe, removed utterly from this interim of 
harshly silent life, and would be secure in a new world 
of marriage—more distant than thought from the world 
of last June, when she had been going with Ned Rick- 
enberg. Ned had come to the show on Friday night; 
he was working on the Schell farm, he told her—good 
money. There had been no mention of a “date”: each 
had tacitly recognized there was nothing between them 
any more. And she had been kissed by him, had rested 
in his arms, and had kissed him, thinking him Herb. 

. . . Unthinkable now. Herb was different; from the 
first he had been different, as she had known even when 
they danced together on the Fourth. Ned was nothing 
but one of the gang of boys around town. Herb had 
gone to the agricultural college at Ames for two years. 
Yet he didn’t want to farm, he wanted to live in town. 
Often he had told her so. All the farms his father 

[95] 


owned would come to him and his sister, and the bank 
stock, too. They would be worth thousands. 

This and more he had given her one Sunday afternoon 
when they had been alone in the car, and content to bask 
in the mild descending sunshine, knowing that far on 
within the mist of the dusk they would find each other’s 
arms. The lazy present hour had been better because all 
was incidental, careless, yet confidential. 

Responding, Arlie had romanticized all she knew of 
her family, breaking Phil Yoder’s heart as she made what 
she could out of her mother’s marriage. “She couldn’t 
get along without pa, and pa couldn’t without her. But 
then, pa was sick for years after they was married, or 
he’d be somebody now, I tell you. He’s got a lot of 
brains, Herb. He’s so keen he sees right through you 
every time. ... If he hadn’t got sick and discouraged 
nothing coulda stopped him.” So she had accounted for 
the present status of her family, referring vaguely to rich 
relatives in Illinois. 

But Herb had done most of the talking, and she had 
liked to hear him, especially when he spoke of his grand¬ 
father, a man who had made vast purchases of Iowa land 
at three dollars an acre. “Not an acre of it worth less 
than two hundred dollars now.” 

“The old boy had a hard life when he was a kid,” Herb 
had said. “Had to live with relatives that didn’t want 
him. They’d beat him up and work him like a dog, and 
never give him enough to eat. Damn near starved to 
death at one place: shut in a granary for three days and 
nothing to eat and no water. All because he’d been 
making some money on the side. . . . Well, he got just 
one idea, land. Land, and then some more land. Iowa 
land. He got it, too. And then when he got a place 
and family of his own he stuffed the old house with 
grub till it tumbled out the doors. He said no one 
would ever go hungry in his house, and no one ever did. 

[96] 


He’d feed anybody. Dad said he had a great big cool 
storeroom, and used to buy flour by wagon loads, and 
big barrels of sugar, and canisters of tea and sacks of 
coffee, and there’d be a dozen big cheeses on the shelves 
all at once. Thirty cows they used to milk, and ship 
butter and sausage straight to some Chicago hotel. I 
can remember him just once, when I was a kid and went 
out in the hog lot with him and he cussed some hired 
men. Big he was, and tall, and had a little pointed gray 
beard. And say—I can remember how his eyes looked. 
Blue, they were . . . 

“But . . . huh . . .” Herb had chuckled, “I guess it 
wasn’t just land he wanted. Anyway old Milt Ramsay 
told me once that they had lots of hired girls on the Shu¬ 
man place. ‘Shuman hires and the Mrs. fires.’ That’s 
what they used to say, Milt said. I guess Grandma 
didn’t get her gray hair for nothing. . . .” 

And when his grandfather had died, Herb’s father had 
had the good sense to hold the acres he inherited, and had 
bought from his brothers and sisters, whose roving in¬ 
stincts had since scattered them from New York to 
Idaho, the land that they had wanted less than ready 
money. Trading, selling, and banks had accounted for 
the steady increase. 

But why had Herb told her all that—especially about 
the hired girls—if he hadn’t been planning for a future 
in which they would go together in a harmony of under¬ 
standing because they knew each other better? Or had 
he been merely bragging? There had been, of course, a 
little trade about it, one listening to the other for a chance 
to talk. 

He had spoken of his mother, tall, dark, nearly fifty 
years old now, and without a gray hair. He showed 
Arlie the picture of her that he carried in his watch. In 
the first instant she thought it a picture of Herb, and 
then caught the difference between them—an elusive diff- 

[97] 


erence, since the features were so closely similar. But on 
the mother’s face time had carved with a finer and ironic 
hand. “She looks like you, Herb, a lot, doesn’t she? 
Like you would if you’d been—oh, I don’t know—a 
minister, maybe, or a priest.” 

“Huh, me a priest!” 

“Well . . ” 

“I don’t take after Dad at all,” he had commented. 
“Dad never says much and he’s a hog for work. Gets 
up at five and turns in early. Mother likes to go places 
when she’s well enough to. And if she isn’t going she’s 
reading.” 

Was his mother sick? 

“Hasn’t been well for a year now. Wants to go to 
California this winter, but Dad thinks she’s all right here. 
He’s slow to see some things. She ought to go.” 

Minute by minute these facts rose and settled as Ar- 
lie worked, first at the Saturday baking, then at the Bi¬ 
jou, then at home again. In the evening she often looked 
up from her change to watch the shuttling of cars and 
buggies and wagons along Main Street, and peered out 
slantwise for Herb’s car, in her anxiety making the first 
mistakes in change. She knew it was unreasonable to 
expect him on Saturday night, because he could not pos¬ 
sibly have had her letter before that morning, and if he 
had been away from the farm he might not get it until 
Sunday. Yet she watched for him, and even as she 
turned home sent a last look for his car, which might still 
emerge from the outflowing stream that was fast leav¬ 
ing the street its barren self. 

2 

Throughout Sunday Arlie staid home, and as much of 
the time as possible spent in her own room, hoping every 
car that turned her way from Main Street was Herb’s, 
and finding hope climb within her as similar cars grew 

[98] 


large and definite and alien along the road. In the eve¬ 
ning she went down into the empty house, at last finding 
her mother on the front porch. They sat silent for a 
long time, though Mrs. Gelston’s rocker creaked volubly; 
at last she spoke: “I sorta thought that Shuman kid’d 
be after you today.” 

“What made you think that?” Arlie inquired from 
where she was sitting on the top step. 

“Well, usually on Sundays he does come.” 

“Didn’t you tell me not to go with him any more?” 
Arlie felt herself slipping easily down hill to a small vir¬ 
tue. 

“Did I? I don’t remember doing it.” 

“That night I threw the plate at Phil it was. You said 
they was tough.” 

“Phil said so. Didn’t know I did.” 

“Well, you did. So I thought”—the descent grew 
steeper—“if you didn’t want me to go with ’em why I 
wouldn’t.” 

“Did you sting him?” 

“Well, sort of ... I don’t know. ... I thought you 
said you didn’t want me to go with him, so naturally—” 

“Ain’t he coming round any more?” 

“No, and I wouldn’t go with him if he did. I don’t 
like him no more.” 

Two yellow headlights swung into the street a block 
away. Her heart jumped and a faint terror lifted her 
breast. Could it be Herb at last! And how could she 
go after saying what she had said ? Why had she said 
it ? She hadn’t meant it. “I mean, ma . . . I mean that 
of course if you’d let me, why . . .” 

The car went past ... a Ford. 

“Why what? Go on.” 

“Oh, nothing . . . I . . .” 

“What’s the matter with you, anyway? I guess you 
need to go back to school.” 

[ 99 ] 


“Oh no, ma, not when I’m making money.” 

“Making shucks! A lot you’re making!” 

At ten o’clock Herb had not come and Arlie went up 
to bed, holding then no hope that he ever would come. 

3 

She wrote another letter to Herb on Wednesday, and 
when no answer came on Friday, wandered disconsolately 
up the hill and down the long slope to Old Town. Again 
she lingered on the decaying bridge that led to the road 
skirting the cemetery. With dull fascination she watched 
the silvery boil and foam of water at the foot of the 
dam. Evening hung over Old Town as a sheen; re¬ 
motely the air held an autumnal pungence, and shadows 
were darkening the enleafed openings of the cemetery. 
Death lay there supine and his breath was an evening 
breath, untroubled. In the shadows and green places 
notes of white and gray wove a stilled melody, and she 
was drawn forward to loiter among the graves. 

Here life was reduced to dates and mounds, and in the 
newer portion the fashion was to have not even the 
mounds. Surely some of these people had suffered once 
as she was suffering. “Carolyn, Beloved Wife of Henry 
Aldous, 1840-1899.” Fifty-nine years, in which there 
had been—what? Maybe she too had been going to have 
a baby of her own, and Henry Aldous had married her. 
“Beloved Wife of—” She had become an attachment, 
something that belonged. It would be good to belong to 
Herb. “Beloved Wife of Herbert Shuman, 1893-1962” 
would be carved on a stone. They would have been old 
together, and all that mattered now would matter so little 
then, would be forgotten. She lay down close to the 
earth, wanting to burrow into its dark; and her body 
was long and straight beside the grave of Carolyn Aldous, 
Beloved Wife. She sank through her own obscuring 

[100] 


dream until she was darkly alive to the mist of congre¬ 
gated dreams below the sod, broken up and mingling to¬ 
ward an ancient unity exhaled from the beloved and 
corrupted wives of earth. 

She woke to the subtle richness of the living air; and 
lying on her back sought with her eyes the upper trans- 
lucence of sky beyond the hill-shadowed green of 
the trees. That light was passing, and she must go to 
work without her supper. There would be bickering 
when she reached home. Well—there was time yet. 
She didn’t have to fight her mother for hours, not until 
nine, till ten. And she didn’t have to endure the birth 
for months. Within the moment, as she lay flat upon 
the immense round of earth, the future that had been 
piled mountainously and torturingly high upon her, 
spread flat in the pattern of its own rounding weeks and 
larger months and years; and she was freer to live 
through it day by day, as it would come, flatly and inci¬ 
dentally. Over that time she would move dominant. 

Dominant moment: her body was mysterious and 
crafty. She was proud of it. “I don’t have to live it 
all at once; oh, I don’t!” She half tongued the words 
behind her lips, which did not break apart for speech. 
‘‘These—these people took years to be themselves. 
They lived along, and I will too, even if Herb don’t 
come.” 

She stood up, and more fully aware of the evening 
light was thankful for it. Was rain coming? Sultri¬ 
ness closing in. . . . Could she carry away with her and 
preserve, preciously clear and untouched, this serenity ? 
Greasy dishes with the yellow of egg hardened on the 
glaze. Drip of words. Clutter of talking to people . . . 
She wanted to lie down again and lose herself in that 
dreamful corruption of the earth. Lost in its gloom, its 
rot, its strength, one of the black wives of earth, lost and 
healed; and time again thinner than the air. For she 

[ioi] 


would weaken, and the horrible suction of what was 
ahead would tug at her till only her body stood in the 
present and September. That tugging would confuse and 
wrench. . . . She must not lift up her eyes to those hills 
—high! Eyes down: the Bijou, Somers, the bud vase for 
her mother. Could she live in all that, week after week? 
Could she hold herself from that disastrous moment 
when she might again hurl herself over the days and 
up the months ? She could try; even now she could 
try, even if she did fail. It was all so confusing. . . . 
She walked on. 

4 

Another week of drizzling rains had passed, and no 
letter had come from Herb. She wrote again, but this 
time registered the letter. 

“Want a return receipt for it?” Tessie Medlin had 
asked, leering palely above her nose glasses. Tessie had 
filled out the forms with a suppressed smile. 

“Receipt, what do you mean? for a letter?” 

“I mean do you want the party you’re sending it to to 
sign a receipt ? Then they send it back to you, and 
you’re sure he got it and no one else.” 

“Why, yes.” 

She turned from the window with relief. Now she 
would know whether he received it or not, and so would 
have at least one indication out of the signless absence 
into which she had committed her letters. If only she 
had done that before! But she had not known about 
the return receipt, and might not have used the knowledge 
anyway. It had been hard enough to register the letter; 
her impulse had been to slip down to the station and mail 
it on the train, for she was beginning to dread the towns¬ 
people. Tessie Medlin, with her knowing smile, had been 
bad enough. She’d mention the fact that Arlie Gelston 
had mailed a registered letter “to that fellow of hers up 

[ 102 ] 


at Lawson,” and they’d all speculate on it in loud voices, 
so that every one in the post office would know. It 
would be talked about at half a dozen supper tables. 
Anyway, it was done. 


5 

September, with its cool evenings and the flies flat 
upon the screens as they sought the warmth within, 
merged through gold into the varied brilliance of October, 
a time when the human sense of smell, long disused, stirs 
drowsily from its torpor to feel within the air its secret 
of decay: spice of broken weeds, dust of ieaves, and the 
acrid pleasure of blue bonfire smoke. 

But it was the season of her body rather than the sea¬ 
son of the year that made Arlie’s nostrils sensitive, 
though for long the knowledge was mere uncoiled sen¬ 
sation and action: she would hesitate, returning home 
from work, before she opened the door on the stuffiness 
within, dominated by the reek of cooking. The early 
morning hours indoors were almost unendurable, but she 
translated it all, at first, into the too excessive presence 
of the house, her parents, the whole situation. “I want 
to get out of it so. I want to get away,” she would say 
to herself. “This place fills me up.” Then one morn¬ 
ing she understood, for when she came into the smoky 
kitchen the fumes seemed to overcome her. She barely 
escaped in time to hide from her mother the wrench of 
nausea. “Morning sickness,” she gasped to herself, and 
when she could again return to the kitchen, tried deter¬ 
minedly for composure. 

“What’s the matter with you?” her mother inquired. 

“Forgot my handkerchief,” she murmured. “Got a 
cold.” 

The next morning she felt as usual until she rose and 
moved about, but was able to control the qualms of her 

[ 103 ] 


stomach until breakfast time. When she had eaten she 
was steady again. . . . Did the secret lie in that? 
Would food aid her always? Thereafter she prepared a 
little lunch at night—she had always “pieced,” so that her 
lunch caused no comment—and secreted part of it in her 
dress as she went upstairs, eating it in the morning be¬ 
fore she stirred from bed. This method did not always 
succeed in giving her comfort; but it did allay the worst 
of the spasms that would otherwise seize her, and she 
succeeded perfectly in concealing the condition from her 
mother. 

With partial control established she was free for other 
worries. She had known such a thing was in store for 
her, but had forgotten. . . . How much else had she 
forgotten? She had come much too close to a complete 
betrayal to wish anything more disastrously open. 

Dress would be her greatest problem. 

For one thing she could insist on a loose winter coat, 
and if only she could buy it herself would get an extra 
large one. Her mother must be kept from shopping with 
her, as she would want to do. Or perhaps a mail 
order house? She spent hours with the pages of coats, 
at last deciding on a blue one, cut loosely, and ordering a 
38 rather than the 36 she knew she required. When it 
came her mother was grieved—her advice had not been 
asked—then torrential to a degree that made Arlie re¬ 
pack the coat in its box to return it. But in her room 
she took it out for one more look and one more trial 
before the mirror. It was such a pretty coat. Pity it 
was so large. . . . Maybe she’d better get the 36 after 
all. . . . Admiring herself she forgot her purpose in get¬ 
ting it too large. She moved suddenly away from the 
mirror, but the coat, catching on a broken handle of the 
lowest bureau drawer, checked her course. With a gasp 
she turned, she might have torn it! 

Then, with great deliberation, she walked on, tugging. 

[104] 


It took a harder pull than she had foreseen, but at last 
the cloth zipped and gave. Solemnly she inspected the 
tear, a triangle at least five inches long. 

“Just pack it careful,” her mother urged when she took 
it down, “and tell ’em it was tore when it came and you 
won’t accept it.” 

“No, ma, I won’t. It can just be a lesson to me. I 
went and bought it without asking you, and it turned out 
something I don’t want. And then I tore it myself, and 
I’ll just wear it. . . . Then next time I’ll remember not 
to be so darned bullheaded. It just serves me right.” 

Mrs. Gelston was placated, and watched Arlie spread 
the cloak out to finger the tear dolefully. 

“I ain’t got no thread that color,” she said, interestedly, 
settling to mildness as she saw the tears gather in Arlie’s 
eyes and mistook them for tears of repentance. 

6 

The return receipt for her letter came a day before 
Herb’s answer, and came from Chicago. Why? What 
had happened? For twenty-four agitated hours Arlie 
wondered. Had he gone there to escape her? But he 
wouldn’t know, not having any unmistakable word from 
her. In black, gigantic Chicago he was lost to her. 

His letter came: 

“Dear Arlie: 

“You will be wondering what sort of thing has happened 
to me that I am writing to you from Chi, but Dad was com¬ 
ing in here on business just after I saw you last and wanted 
me to come along and it didn’t take me long to say yes. 
We are staying at some relatives of mine, and I started right 
in having a good time. I have some cousins here who seem 
to know the town moderately well. Too well, I am afraid 
some people would think. I wish that you could be here 
too. 


“I am going home in a day or two now, and then I will 
drive over to Coon Falls and see what it is that seems so 
important to you, though probably I have a good hunch 
already. 

“How do you like working at the Bijou? Remember the 
night we went there first and then for a little spin? I’ll 
probably be over next Sunday evening. So long until then. 

“As ever, 

“Herbert P. Shuman.” 

She folded her troubles away and put them with the 
sheets into the envelope, and knew until Sunday a wry 
peace. 

He came about five o'clock, Arlie ran out and the car 
roared away. Neither spoke until they were well out 
of town and rolling between the cornfields of mangy 
gold. 

“Well, what’s it all about?” he asked, with careful 
carelessness, yet with a tinge of impatience. 

Arlie did not answer immediately. She was pushing 
out with her mind, seeking to work and worm her way to 
the very center of his, repulsed and eternally baffled by 
their human separateness. Within that head, behind the 
narrow brow and dark glint of the eye, behind and with¬ 
in all, lay a feeling, a word, a sentence, desires and de¬ 
cisions that were going to change all or condense for 
her the outspreading misery. She was much less con¬ 
fident now of Herb’s response, and as she fingered pos¬ 
sible words she was too absorbed to note how far re¬ 
moved this reality was from the immediate succor that 
in her dreams he was to ofifer, even to force upon her 
weakly protesting self. . . . “What’s it all about?” had 
he asked? The current of self flickered to blankness for 
a second, as the lights do at times, then flowed on, bright, 
vague, about to break into words, futile words. . . . 

“Well!” He was impatient now. 

“You know, Herb, those rides we took?” 

[106] 


He smiled without turning to her. The smile made it 
harder. “Yes, yes. Go on,” he said. “Get it out of 
your system.” 

“I can’t . . . talk here. Let’s stop somewhere. I 
can’t think when we’re going so fast.” 

“All right.” His tone was curt. They flew up a hill, 
swooped down with the speed of a fall on emptiness and 
rolled solidly on the level road. The car picked up, the 
river gleamed coldly ahead, and they swung through 
trees to a little covert by the bank. Dying vegetation, 
colored russet and sage, lined the slow banks toward a 
smoky haze at the distant curve. There the sun was 
overlaying the muddy green water with a last bar of gold 
that faded even as they sat there, silent. 

“Not a bad place,” said Herb. “Wish I’d found it be¬ 
fore. . . . Well, shoot.” 

“Well,” she echoed, “you know those last rides 
we had . . . well, they got me. I’m going to have a 
baby.” 

“Yes ... ?” He did not seem at all perturbed as he 
drew forth a cigarette and lit it, deliberately, before 
settling back. “I sorta thought that was what you were 
going to pull.” 

“Pull?” 

“Yes, pull!” Anger spoke, and Arlie flinched into her¬ 
self. “It’s a damn’ fine scheme, that’s all I got to say. 
Only it don’t work with yours truly.” 

“I haven’t any scheme, Herb. Honest I haven’t. 
That’s it. I don’t know what to do. I thought maybe 
you’d . . .” 

“Yes, you thought I’d marry you all right. Only I 
won’t. Get that?” But his eyes broke from the direct¬ 
ness of her own. 

“Oh,” her voice rose, “you thought I meant to pull 
this just to get you to marry me when I’m not going to 
have a kid at all.” Unexpectedly it hurt her to say 

[107] 


“kid,” and she lowered her voice and looked away; her 
mind turning stupidly in an effort at thought. 

“I guess,” Herb said in a minute, “I guess I talked too 
damn’ much about my dad’s farms. It must have been 
too much for you. Is your mother going to help out 
on this too?” 

“My mother don’t know. Nobody does, except you.” 

“I’ll bet.” 

“But I wouldn’t lie to you, Herb. Oh, my God, I 
wouldn’t! Listen to me. I’m telling you the truth. I 
can’t prove it to you—yet. But I am. ... I did think 
maybe you’d marry me. I—” 

“Huh, glad you admit it.” 

Her face whitened as she turned to him. “Look here, 
Herb Shuman, I’m telling you the truth and you know 
it, even if you won’t admit it. What do you want 
me to do, come to you with your kid in my arms? I 
guess if you could have morning sickness about once 
you’d know.” 

“What’s that, morning sickness ?” 

“You throw up, every morning. That’s what it is, 
and I wish to God you could have it once.” 

“Thanks. Don’t care for any.” He flipped his short¬ 
ened cigarette into the river, where it sizzled out, and lit 
another. 

“That’s it, joke about it. But it’s a darn poor joke.” 

“Oh hell.” He jumped out of the car and loitered 
along the river bank, tossing pebbles into the river to 
watch the circles grow. Neither said a word, and in a 
few minutes he wandered back to lean against the door 
of the automobile. “Now listen,” he said. “Do you 
swear to God that you’re going to have a kid ?” 

“I’ve told you,” she said. 

“And you’re damn’ sure it’s mine?” 

Pain quivered on the face that was watching him, a 
face that in the obscuring twilight seemed magically to 

[108] 


keep its tense white and lonely blueness of eyes. “Of 
course it’s yours. Who else I been with?” 

“That’s what I’d like to know. The Fourth you was 
with Rickenberg, and how do I know but Dolly’s been 
coming over since I been in Chicago? He used to talk 
about you enough.” 

“Dolly?” 

“Yes, Dolly. ... I see you’re interested.” 

“I’m not. I don’t like him at all. Pimply old fool!” 
Herb grinned. “Furthermore, Herb Shuman, you know, 
way down deep you do, that you don’t need to talk about 
any one but yourself. You know yourself you were 
coming every night.” 

“Oh well—hell! Let it drop.” More evidently now, 
he was disturbed, and Arlie, watching his face, began 
to hope. And hope brought mildness. 

“You see, Herb—my God! It ain’t anything I want. 
And if you think it’s pleasant business to talk with you 
this way why you got another guess coming. I’d give 
anything— anything —to get out of it.” 

“When’s the kid due?” he asked. 

“About the first of May—near as I can figure it. I 
don’t know really. It’s nine months.” 

“Oh hell ... of course.” 

“But Herb, what am I going to do ?” 

“How do I know?” 

“If you’d just say something . . . definite. . . . (‘Say 
that you’ll marry me, marry me’—echoed within her.) 

“I was going out to California with mother,” he 
thought aloud. “We were going to stay there till spring. 
Go in November. She ain’t been well. I was telling 
you about it. And I got to go with her.” 

“Why?” (Coon Falls and spring, and Herb in Cali¬ 
fornia—.) 

“Dad won’t go. Says he can’t, and I guess he’s right. 
He’s got some big deals on, and Gloria’s at the U. She’d 

[109] 


worry mother half to death anyway. And mother’s been 
so sick . . . means her life maybe. . . . It’s just about 
up to me to go along. . . . Besides, I want to.” 

(Wildness: couldn’t he take me? But she did not ask 
it. . . . That was it, he wanted to go.) 

“Of course,” she said, “what I got my heart set on, 
what I want to do, is to have a kid back in Coon Falls 
with no name. What I want is to have everybody in the 
country -talk about me, and to slink around town like a 
whipped dog, and have ma hell me around at home for 
the rest of my life, and never be able to work or play 
or anything. Just stay at home . . . home, with ma . . . 
that's what I want to do.” She crunched into a heap, 
bent awkwardly so that her side was slowly wrenched as 
she lay there sobbing. 

Herb watched her silently. Shadows lay across his 
golden winter, his plans were interfered with for the 
first time. Even if he went he could not go with the 
light heart and the careless eagerness he had used in the 
past. The beauty of mountain and grove would not be 
flung casually before him that he might be careless with 
it. Youth, when one can look on beauty without pain, 
was dropping from him with each difficultly taken breath 
of the girl before him. “There, Arlie, don’t cry. . . . 
We’ll fix it somehow. I didn’t know ... I didn’t be¬ 
lieve it. . . . But I do now. . . . Come on, stop crying.” 

A long breath and sighing expiration. “That’s it, 
that’s it. . . . It’ll be all right now . . . only we got to 
think, think it out. There, stop. Stop it, I tell 
you! My God, Arlie”—shaking her—“can’t you con¬ 
trol yourself ? Stop it, I tell you !” 

She sat up, wiping at her inflamed eyes; her cheek was 
stained and embossed by the pressure against the folds of 
the seat. “I—I can control myself as well as you can.” 
A gasp. 


[IIO] 


“Now listen, Arlie,” he soothed, “we got to get this 
straight. We can’t marry on nothing, and I can’t see 
how I’m going to get out of that trip to California. If 
I don’t go—well—suppose mother died? How’d I feel 
then ? Don’t you see ?” 

“Yes, I see. How I’ll feel don’t matter, I supposed 

“Hell!” he shouted at her. “Can’t you listen to rea¬ 
son? Say, can’t you? Any one’d think you’d gone nuts. 
What’s wrong with you?” 

“Everything . . . nothing,” with the words just aud¬ 
ible. 

“I guess everything is, all right. . . . But you do your 
best to listen while I tell you a few things. In the first 
place I simply ain’t got the money to marry. I blew 
every damn’ cent I had in Chicago, and checked on dad 
for every cent he’ll stand for, for the next six months. 
And mother won’t give me nothing till we get started 
for California. Now, can you get that through your 
head ?” 

“Yes”—meekly. 

“I ain’t got a damn’ cent—” 

“Oh, I heard you. Go on: you ain’t got a damn’ cent.” 

“Well . . . well? How can we marry on nothing?” 

“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t suppose we can. . . . 
I’m too tired to think. Get in, and let’s go back.” 

“In a minute”—with words more hurried now—“I want 
you to understand, Arlie. I’m not trying to put any¬ 
thing over on you. I’d just as soon marry you as not, 
only . . .” 

This, from the man who in her dreams had so trium¬ 
phantly swooped to her rescue, lifting her out of Coon 
Falls, to journey with her, prosperously and immacu¬ 
lately, down a straight level road of marriage! It was 
hard to turn even her head, weighted as it was, to note 
the fingers fidgeting on the car door. His gaze was ab- 

[in] 


stracted, and what lay behind his eyes she did not even 
care to discover. In the attempt lay inevitable frustra¬ 
tion. 

“Only what?” she at last prompted, wanting above all 
now to work through until Herb could go—free or bound 
she did not care—and she herself return to the old worry 
and inertia, as one who goes back to misery with relief, 
because that at least is an unchanging and certain home. 
She would not have known herself had Herb magically 
cleared the road down which she saw only the gather¬ 
ing mists. 

“Arlie, I . . . it’s too damn’ hard. I don’t want to 
marry yet. What could I do? Dad wouldn’t help me in 
a scrape like that. He’s old-fashioned. And mother, it 
would break her heart.” 

The light was dim, but Arlie could see that his face 
was not under control. Was he going to cry! A chord 
was struck in her, and far within she heard its dim res¬ 
onance, and reached a hand toward him. “Get in, Herb,” 
she said gently. “Just a minute, before we go.” Dumbly 
he climbed into the seat and her hands caressed him. 
She was close to tears herself. “I don’t want to make 
you feel so bad about it, Herb. I—it isn’t all your fault, 
I know. Back in the summer I give you what you 
wanted, but I wanted it too. I know I did. We was 
together, that was all. I could just feel then, I couldn’t 
see. I don’t know it woulda made any difference 
if I coulda seen. I know it wouldn’t. I’m not blaming 
you, Herb, but it was so awful. I had to tell some one. 
Who was there but you? But, Herb, I never meant to 
make you marry me if you didn’t want to. I guess I 
didn’t think that you wouldn’t want to. I—” She 
stopped. She could not go on. The sky that for the 
past few moments had been light with a strange pallor 
of green, had darkened menacingly to the opaqueness of 
the river water. Clouds were massive; and like a ghostly 

[ 112 ] 


lightning, infinitely pale and infinitely fine and harsh, 
malignancy returned, bathing the low heaven with sub¬ 
tle poison hovering above her. Something would strike. 
Under it she was again small, shrunken, helpless. 

“You didn’t think that I wouldn’t want to?” her last 
words returned to her, echoed in a voice not her own, of 
a deeper timbre, petulant . . . his voice, bridging so 
thinly the gulf of their separation. What had she to do 
with him, this other, and what could he mean to her in 
her aloneness? 

Again the voice: “What’s the matter? What you 
thinking of now? What other 1 notion you got in your 
head?” Incredibly remote he seemed as he talked, talked. 
What was in her head? Tell him . . . ? What could 
be told? 

“Nothing, Herb.” His name was a word to test, a 
word she had used once, but now meaningless. “Herb 
. . . Herb”—a funny sound. “I want to go home.” Her 
voice was as far ofif as his own. “Crank up, will you? 
I gotta work tomorrow.” 

When they were half way home Herb began to talk, 
and talked incessantly. He’d see what he could do. 
Maybe he could get some money. Perhaps his mother 
wouldn’t have to go to California. Anyway, didn’t she 
see that they couldn’t be married without cash, good hard 
old cash, to live on. And he didn’t have it, not a damn’ 
cent. “But don’t worry, old girl. I’ll see you out of 
this. Somehow we’ll manage, just as quick as I can get 
some cash.” 

She assented briefly, wanting to be home, free, alone. 

She was surprised, by Monday afternoon, to find that 
the give she had found in him in place of the strength 
she had sought, was not going to disconcert her as much 
as she had expected the night before, when she had gone 
to sleep thinking she would awaken to a new access of 
misery that she was then too tired to find real. But 

[113] 


her last thought that night had been a wandering pity 
for Herb, who was finding as she had found, where she 
had been playing pleasantly in warm and shallow waters 
—a deep and a sudden cold. 


CHAPTER IX 


WINTER GROWTH 

I 

One morning toward the middle of November as Arlie 
lay awake in the chill of arriving dawn, she realized that 
she was foreseeing the hours of the day calmly and with¬ 
out dread. She remembered then the darkness by the 
grave of Carolyn Aldous, and her momentary triumph 
over fear and time. When she had walked away from 
the cemetery she had found herself losing, with every 
step, the valiance that had risen in her; in the putter of 
succeeding days it had been not only lost but forgotten. 
She had forgotten it, but—“I’ve done it anyway,” she 
said aloud. 

She did not look into causes, knowing now only that 
after the talk with Herb she had quietly accepted her con¬ 
dition as if he had withdrawn from her life completely. 
Her thought of him still wandered toward pity, as for 
one who had been too greatly disturbed for his capacity 
to bear disturbance. 

Of late her energy had gone into reducing her work to 
as strict a routine as her mother would permit. She rose 
at six, built the fire in the range, brought in coal, 
started breakfast, and attacked the supper dishes that 
were always left for her. When breakfast was nearly 
ready her mother, in stockinged feet, would blink her 
way into the kitchen, wash perfunctorily at the sink, 

[US] 


and grunt laboriously as she drew on her shoes. Shortly 
after, her father would come in to comb his kinked hair 
until it shone in straight black separate strands over his 
forehead and down to his eyes, when he would part it 
carefully and brush it in scrolls above his temples. Phil, 
after being called repeatedly, would whistle in by the time 
the others had finished breakfast. But these and all the 
other irregularities that she could, Arlie caught into her 
scheme and was not disturbed. She had learned to ex¬ 
pect Phil to be late, her mother to be critical and change¬ 
able, and her father to be sullen until he had eaten. 

The work at the Bijou she organized even more 
thoroughly, for there she was freer; by this time she 
could do all the cleaning in two-thirds the time neces¬ 
sary in September. 

As winter approached she was glad of this, for the 
great room with its creaking seats was chillier, and, in its 
chilliness, emptier than ever. In the afternoons an hour 
or two often opened before her; then she would tat, 
embroider, read. Or, when she knew her mother was 
gone for some time, she would try to shift her clothes to 
a looser pattern, for already they were too tight, des¬ 
pite the pressure which her strenuously laced corset put 
upon her developing body. Her mother was complaining 
about the general slouchiness of her dress: “What you 
buy them great big middies for and wear ’em now? 
Why don’t you save ’em till summer and wear ’em?” 
She complained too of the coat, its bagginess, its color, 
the triangular tear. “Well, it’s my own money, ma,” 
Arlie would reply, “and I’m going to buy what I want 
with it, I don’t care what you say.” 

After Thanksgiving, in the afternoon hours, she found 
her embroidery or magazine slipping from useless fingers. 
Her eyes would be heavy. She began to take long naps, 
first loosening her corset, and releasing herself into con¬ 
tentment without future before she dulled into dreams. 

[n6] 


The first dreams would waken her to a twisting, acrid 
consciousness of something wrong, something awry, but 
what she could not remember. Then, with her eyes de- 
creasingly aware of the slits of light along the drawn 
blinds, she would fall into a sound sleep that was in¬ 
variably refreshing. So it always was—first the sleep 
of haggard dreams, of which no images but only the 
poisonous disturbance remained, and then the deep cold 
of forgetfulness, out of which she ascended confident and 
strong for the day’s darkening but busy hours. 

2 

Letters from Herb had come at irregular intervals re¬ 
flecting again and again what he had said on the ride 
home. His mother was very weak, he wrote, but his 
father was thinking more favorably of going to Cali¬ 
fornia too. In which case they could “make some ar¬ 
rangement.” 

To the first letters Arlie replied briefly, hoping that 
he would “manage to help” her. “I don’t want you to 
marry me if you can’t be happy with me,” she wrote 
once, “but I think you can. How will you feel later on 
to have a son growing up down here and have him yours 
and not be married to his mother? I wish you could 
talk to your own mother about it, if it wouldn’t make her 
too sick. Maybe she would see it like I do. And I 
love you Herb and don’t think I can ever love anybody 
else. I want to talk to you sometimes but not if you 
talk the way you did that last Sunday.” And in an¬ 
other: “I guess from what I have learned I could make 
you marry me if I wanted to but I don’t want to make 
you. I want you to want to yourself. I have burned 
all your letters so I can’t do anything to you with them.” 
(This, after she had slipped into a back seat in the Bijou 
one stormy night to see on the screen some rainy film 

[n/] 


in which a packet of letters after playing a central role, 
had gone up in smoke in a great marble fireplace, with 
hero and heroine sentimentally watching them.) “Be¬ 
sides, I was afraid ma might get hold of them. So you 
see where I stand.” 

This last letter crossed in the mails with a short note 
from Herb: 

“Dear Arlie: 

“Please find enclosed fifty dollars ($50.00) in ten dollar 
bills. It’s all the cash I can get together now but you can 
see it isn’t enough to get married on. I expect to have 
more shortly, when I will write you and let you know what 
I am planning. Don’t worry kid, because I will help you 
out just as soon as I can. 

“As ever, 

“Herbert Shuman.” 


She answered: 

“I am putting away the bills you sent, though I would 
like to send them back, so you couldn’t feel you had done 
anything for me. But you see I am right where I got 
to keep it. In a way I am glad too, because the bills mean 
you have been thinking about me and something has been 
bothering you. You can’t be happy now and I know you 
can’t. You thought that Sunday the best thing to do 
was to get away from me. It’s harder to have me near I 
suppose and a lot easier to poke me away with a letter. 
When you get done talking to me I am still sitting by you 
and you don’t like it, but when you mail a letter, well— 

“But now I know you Herb and I know you’re not going 
to have a good time when I am not. In a way I wish you 
was going to. Somebody ought to be happy. 

“Arlie G.” 

No answer came. She wondered if he had decided to 
write no more because she had reminded him of the pos¬ 
sible uses of letters, and was afraid; or whether he had 

[ns] 


given up all thought of helping her and was leaving the 
outcome to time, as was she. In any event no more 
letters came, and gradually, as the days shortened through 
December, she ceased to wonder whether he would write 
again; but at mail time her mind rose to a distant climax, 
and the sight of a Des Moines paper thrown on the table 
by her father when he came home at noon was always, 
dissatisfying because it was only itself. 

3 

One Sunday night after the lugubriously uneventful 
Christmas had passed, Mrs. Gelston was restless; the 
Sunday papers had been read into a torn confusion on 
the floor; there seemed to be nothing more to talk about. 
Mrs. Gelston decided to go to church. She told Arlie 
to get ready. “Take off those awful middies and put on 
your serge.” Arlie was recalcitrant—she was not going. 
Spatter of words to a compromise: she would go if her 
mother wouldn’t make her change her clothes; she was 
too tired to do both. Febrile acquiescence. They de¬ 
parted. 

It had been, it seemed to Arlie, long years since she 
had gone to church. They crunched their way down 
the lonely snow-packed sidewalk to Main Street and be¬ 
yond. As they walked, Arlie glimpsed those other Sab¬ 
baths far back in the gigantic perspective in which youth 
remembers its few years—years that dwindle to sunny 
ancientry and haze. She had been small then, and her 
mother, tall and enormously powerful, had dragged her 
along the hot streets, painfully, by one arm. Through 
the massive church music had boomed and died, and a. 
large man had spoken words that made her shiver. 
Hymns, prayer, silence, and the Lord’s Prayer. . . .. 
Once she had been reprimanded for telling her mother,, 
after service, that when the minister said the Lord’s 

[119] 


Prayer it had been just like petting a cat: after a while 
the cat began to purr. 

But now she was taller than her mother, and she 
wouldn’t be likely to say anything offensive. And the 
church was smaller; the temple, once spacious, was com¬ 
pressed now, insufficient, but intimate. The congrega¬ 
tion was simply the people she knew, but a little quieter, 
and a little stiffer in their better and uncomfortable clothes. 
It was even good to be among them, to feel them all 
around. Yes, she would come again, and without her 
mother—who sat beside her with shut lips and a body 
primly held. 

A week later she did return, and alone. 

The mid-winter revival was close at hand, and the 
minister was working toward it, preparing for a convic¬ 
tion of sin. “And there shall be no more weeping nor 
sighing, for the former things are passed away.” From 
the text were evolved brimstone and eternal magic, sud¬ 
den and monstrous growths . . . with everything paling 
toward tears and the climacteric light of a Presence. 
Arlie worked on the harsh words that rose to the gray 
'song of biblical cadence. Tension—relief. From front 
to hack the congregation in a wave stood up. Stood up 
'-and sang: “Earth hath no sorrow that Heaven can¬ 
not heal.” A sob gathered in her throat. It was to be 
controlled, so that she might join in the singing, as she 
did, though with faint voice. They were all together, 
dwelling in impermanence, and going toward the light 
and rest. It was so good—so good—to be of them. 
The revival meetings were coming. . . . “Now-may-the- 
peace-of-the-Lord abide with us henceforth and for¬ 
evermore. Amen.” They turned, coats were put on, 
they moved slowly into the aisles. 

Near the door Arlie met Belle Ritchie, whom she had 
not seen for weeks; but Belle wandered back into the 
•crowd to seek La Verne Shattuck. For a moment Arlie 

[ 120] 


waited, thinking Belle might return. Belle did, but 
pushed on with La Verne, their heads bent together. 
They gave Arlie not a glance ... of course they would 
be going different ways outside, but . . . Was it the 
first cut ? Surely Belle couldn’t know. Herb was the 
only one who knew. Or did people suspect? Only two 
or three had spoken to her. . . . She walked out and 
down the steps. 

Somebody clattered down the steps after her, as if try¬ 
ing to catch up. “Hello there!”—just at her shoulder. 
Arlie turned: it was Miss Haggerty, the teacher. 

“Oh,” said Miss Haggerty, “I thought it was one of 
the teachers. No matter ... I guess we go the same 
way, don’t we?” 

“I guess so,” Arlie replied, turning west. “I go this 
way.” They walked on. 

“It’s a little colder tonight after the thaw, isn’t it?” 
Miss Haggerty settled her fur collar closer about her 
neck. 

“A little,” Arlie admitted. She felt uncomfortable* 
and hoped Miss Haggerty would turn at the next corner. 

“But it’s good to get out of that stuffy church; I 
thought I’d suffocate with all that brimstone.” 

“Oh, you mean—about hell, and salvation and all ?” 

“I suppose I do. . . . Yes, certainly. Imagine—all 
that in the twentieth century. Garden of Eden . . „ 
huh! . . . I used to believe it myself though, until I went 
to the university.” 

“I guess they’re all atheists down there,” Arlie com¬ 
mented. 

“Atheists . . . ? Oh. Let’s see. I wonder if we 
know each other. I’m Miss Haggerty: teach in the high 
school. Your face seems familiar?” This while they 
were under the corner light. 

“I’m Arlie Gelston. I was in your class the first of 
the year, until I quit school. I work at the Bijou now.” 

[ 121 ] 


“Oh yes, of course. That’s where I’ve seen you. . . . 
Arlie Gelston, you said? Fve heard your name.” 

(Heard my name. . . . What about my name? She 
fled from the mention of names, striking blindly back 
at what had been said.) “I suppose you think there 
isn’t any heaven and hell?” 

“Oh, I won’t say quite that. It depends on how you 
interpret the words, I suppose. Maybe they’re real and 
maybe they’re superstitions, half beautiful sometimes, 
and lurid. But I suppose I shouldn’t talk this way. I’m 
glad you’re not one of my students. Maybe,” she 
laughed, “you won’t tell on me.” 

“I never tell on any one. I wouldn’t. . . . But don’t 
you believe in . . . life after death?” Hushed words. 

“No, I don’t think so.” 

“Then what’s death?” 

“Why ask me? I don’t know. As far as I’m con¬ 
cerned it’s a black hole you drop into, and keep on drop¬ 
ping.” 

“And . . . and never stop?” 

“Nope.” With a laugh. 

“Gee ... I never thought that . . . I . . .” She 
was frightened and dizzy. Earth hath no sorrow. . . . 
Would there never be healing, but only a black dropping 
away from worries and confusions, and nothing ever set 
right? Her eyes wavered, seeking answer and refuge in 
the cold pallor of moonlight on the dirty buildings and 
white land. Bleartless light. She heard only the mur¬ 
mur of words at the rupture of their progress when Miss 
Haggerty turned down a side street. Alone again on 
the lonely walk. . . . This—this light, lay somehow be¬ 
yond the murk of God, was alone final and real. Every 
one believed it in his heart. Her mother? Phil . . . 
Surely not. But what people believed must matter to 
them. These strange hidden . . . darkening over. They 
must be shut out. You couldn’t live under all that. She 

[122] 


would go back to the church. People all around, com¬ 
forting you, believing things. She had never heard of 
anything else. She would go back. 

Tranced, she entered the house, undressed, and knelt 
by her bed to pray, to conjure back the old hope; and be¬ 
fore its failure to come she was inarticulate. Yet when 
she climbed into bed she thought she had prayed. 

She woke to a slaty day and to the thought of the 
washing. In the night all fear had left. Barely could 
she recall it. Funny. . . . There would be the torturous 
wringer and the cold lines on which her mother would 
insist that she hang the stiffening clothes. Maybe it 
would warm to a thaw, as it had yesterday. Though 
that would make worse the soapy choking steam of the 
kitchen. Then, as a fish leaps out of the water, so leapt 
into her body’s consciousness the stir of the child within. 

The succeeding minutes were given in their fullness to 
watching her body, that held now a stirring gesture of 
the world’s significance—a gift from which Herb was 
wholly separated—yes, and even herself. A new fact 
in the dirty tumult of the world, that she caressed and 
admired, and shrank from in quick panic, closing her 
eyes and burying her head under the covers, seeking 
dark, seeking existence without foresight and without 
memory. 

She rushed out of bed, and in dressing pulled her cor- 
set strings till she feared a cry from within. She went 
downstairs feeling as if she were committing a slow and 
silent murder, from which release must come soon and 
decisively if she were to live. 

5 

The next morning’s train for Lawson had Arlie for 
one of its passengers. As the automobile makes it the 
distance from Coon Falls to Lawson is only a little above 

[123] 


eight miles; by train it is more than thirty, with a long 
wait at Shelley Junction. 

Leaving her work at the Bijou until she could return 
in the afternoon, Arlie had boarded the train without her 
ticket, lest her father know of her trip. She gave her¬ 
self no clear reason for her action. Panic would have 
made her clutch out for protection to anybody who might 
have been near to offer it—would have made her clutch 
out hoping to be held and assured. The ride to Lawson 
was only the elongation of such an impulse, with no more 
of reason behind it than would have been behind the 
simple outreaching of her hand. 

The train jolted on between thawing fields, water 
trickling brightly down the gullies; black lined the gray 
ridges. As the train noised away Arlie had rest, and 
a measure of escape from the stiffening circumstance of 
the last months, but in this interval running to a close 
she found herself speculating. After all, why was she 
going? Since he had sent the fifty dollars Herb had not 
written. Why? And in what had she been sunk that 
she had ceased to care? Hadn’t she been thinking at all 
through these weeks ? Months they were now. She 
would have to find the way out to Herb’s. It was two 
or three miles, she remembered, an easy walk. She 
hoped Herb would be alone in the house. Otherwise a 
talk with him would be difficult to arrange. 

“Shelley Junction,” the brakeman cried. 

After she had changed cars and was on the train for 
Hawson she dozed, pulling the blind against the brilliance 
•of the sun. If only she could pass her life on trains— 
■constant change, new people, new towns, no worries. If 
-she were . . . she dozed in brightness, conscious of dif¬ 
fused light but too inert to move. Let it beat on her, 
she could not care, and could not be expected to pull the 
blinds on all the windows. She had on her own; that 
was enough. The long car lurched and ran. . . . An 

[124] 


old couple across the aisle sat too stiffly to enjoy them¬ 
selves. What if they were Herb’s parents? Clicking 
of rails. The whistle sang to the bright air. Behind 
her people were talking. She would talk—to Herb, 
happy and secure then, for Herb would, surely he would* 
care for her now and keep her. 

“Lawson.” 

Off the train she felt secure until it pulled away and 
she saw it dwindle down the track. Desolation fell with 
its old inertia. She could not move. When she did she 
walked slowly down Main Street, staring dully at the 
loafers in the pool hall, who edged to the window to fol¬ 
low her with their stare—a clumsy figure in a loose, 
baggy coat, and with avid blue eyes under a black hah. 
Could they, who had never seen her, tell what was be¬ 
neath the thick coat? But why on earth was she wan¬ 
dering around so aimlessly? She had come to Lawson 
to find Herb, to tell him ... to have him care for her. 
This was not finding him. 

Back at the station she asked the agent if he could 
tell her the way to Shuman’s farm. He looked at her 
oddly from his Swedish face. “Take the road along the 
track out to the first turn to the right. Then a mile 
north. It’s a big white house with a big red chimney 
all the way up. You can’t miss it.” 

“It’s about two miles, isn’t it?” she asked. 

“Oh, two—maybe three. I don’t know. ’Round there 
anyway. Going to walk?” 

“Yes, I guess so.” 

“Awful bad walking, 7 ’d say. Why don’t you ’phone 
Shuman and tell him to come for you. Are you a rela¬ 
tive or something?” 

“No, I’m not a relative. Thank you—for the infor¬ 
mation.” 

“Sure, call again. Lots of information here.” 

For a distance along the track she could use the ce- 

[125] 


ment sidewalk on which the mush of snow was seldom 
over half an inch deep, and often only a surface. The 
first rods of the road, she hoped as she splashed through 
them, would be the worst of all, but soon she decided 
they were the best she was likely to meet. 

The last house was left behind and the first long slope 
of the hill began. Her feet stuck, slipped, discouragingly 
sloshed around. She would be a sight by the time she 
got there. Would she be able to show herself at all? 
The large coat, flouncing around her, was being spattered 
along the lower border, and her feet were ponderous clods, 
shapeless as blots. And yet, she was covering the dis¬ 
tance. Behind her rose the dingy cubes of the town and 
the frayed gray veil of trees, a mess of houses that made 
inviting even the slopes of grizzled fields with their 
broken yellow cornstalks, and even the road that at its 
crest hit the dull flank of the sky. The road seemed to 
stop, leaving a jump into the gray misery of the day, 
from which at some moment the sunshine had been with¬ 
drawn. 

She was hot, and unbuttoned her collar. The coat 
was plastered and dripping now, her shoes indiscernible 
under the mud. Her dress must be as bad as the coat, 
she reflected, but did not wish to look; the mirror that 
morning had revealed an unmistakable fullness of the 
waist. At the time gladness had taken her—it would 
be proof. Now, with the turn of the road not reached, it 
was heaviness. At the crest of the hill she made out a 
white house with evergreens around it, set across an in¬ 
terminable width of slope and level land. “Bright Val¬ 
ley” the farm was called. Herb had said so. 

At the bottom of the hill she thought she could go no 
farther, her feet floundered, slid disastrously, making 
her almost lose her balance, which she regained only with 
gasping effort. The crossroads, when she reached them, 

[126] 


dazed her with the necessity of choice. Blindly she 
turned at last into the black of the next mile. She had 
not eaten enough breakfast, she needed dinner, and the 
heaviness of the child came to be as lead. Her coat 
was hopeless now and her hat had slid far back on her 
disordered hair, sweaty wisps of which had been plastered 
tightly to her forehead. 

The physical exertion was sinking to its own plane, but 
her mind whirled on a round of thought she could not 
stop, a round propelled by the labor of her feet, her legs, 
her whole body: She had the proof now and would 
show it to Herb, show it to Herb. He would have to be¬ 
lieve, he couldn’t help it. Then, when he did, her trouble 
was over, over for good. She was free of her mother, 
free of Coon Falls, free of her brother. They must be 
having dinner at home, and her father would be complain¬ 
ing about the potatoes. He always complained, and al¬ 
ways they fought. 

With every step she heard her father’s petulant voice, 
and could not dislodge his face as he looked up to com¬ 
plain, about the mud, the horrible slipperiness. It had 
been so different when Herb had come for her in the 
car. He would help her out now, out of Coon Falls, 
and home with its dinner, that they would be eating now, 
and her father complaining about the potatoes, and about 
the mud that was rising to meet her and had given way 
beneath her foot, and was letting the cold of its grease 
soak through coat and dress to her knees. Mud slipped 
between her stiff fingers. . . . 

She had fallen and must get up. 

She moved, then was quiet on all fours, the coat 
spreading on the murk of the road, the hat falling for¬ 
ward to reveal the narrow width of neck. Her hands, 
outstretched to save her, clutched mud. A sound from 
her lips, then words: “I can’t. . . .” 

[127] 


But she rose, wiped her face with her arm, leaving 
streaks of mud, and stared inanely ahead before she 
started on. 

Ten minutes later she sat on a stone step by the side 
of the road, cleaning her face, and scraping mud from 
her shoes with a stick. The evergreens behind her con¬ 
cealed these operations from view of the house, and she 
felt safe. The relief of sitting down had revived her 
to the point where she could roughly think, but the re¬ 
sult of her thought confused her more than the pre¬ 
ceding tumult. Stick in hand, she stared at the sodden 
fields and useless fence. Now that she was here just 
what was she going to do ? What had she expected 
when she had set out? Everything beyond taking the 
train had been a blur, and the blur a wall beyond which 
she had not looked. Boarding the train had been like 
pushing a lever—greater forces than she realized had 
been released: distance had been traversed, time con¬ 
sumed, Lawson reached; and in Lawson the only thing 
to do had been to get out of the town, to look for Herb, 
to walk. She had walked, was there—was here, in front 
of the evergreens that hid Herb’s house. To give him 
proof? But she had scorned to give him proof. She 
had told him she wouldn’t marry him unless he really 
wanted to marry her, unless he loved her. Why should 
she have thought of proof? He had believed her with¬ 
out. She had no reason on earth for being where she 
was—miles from home on a January morning with her 
work undone, her clothes a mess; and she didn’t know 
a soul in the house before which she sat. Except Herb 
. . . and Herb had poked her away and away with let¬ 
ters. Her being there was the most senseless thing on 
earth. It was almost funny. It was funny. . . . 

Then, not because she had made a decision, nor be¬ 
cause she saw clearly what she was going to say, but 
because she did not know and because she could no longer 

[128] 


bear to look at the fact, she got up and walked stiffly to¬ 
ward the house. 

The bell, when she pushed it, rang coldly and distantly 
inside. She waited. Steps. Whose? 

A woman opened the door. Not Herb’s mother. 

“Does Herb . . . Herbert Shuman live here?” 

The woman eyed her up and down. “This is where 
he lives when he’s home,” she answered. 

“Oh, isn’t he home?” 

“He’s in California this winter, with his ma.” 

“Oh . . . California. Yes ... I knew he was go¬ 
ing. I didn’t know he’d gone yet.” 

“Yeh, he went before Christmas, about the second 
week in December it was.” 

“When’ll he be back? Soon? I just wanted to see 
him a minute. I was going through town and just 
thought I’d drop out. I—” 

“Well, he’s gone. Only Mr. Shuman is here now.” 

“Mr. Shuman? Oh, I see. All right. I’m sorry to 
bother you.” 

As Arlie stepped back the woman opened the door 
wider and came out. “Got a car or buggy out there?” 
she demanded. “I don’t see none. You didn’t walk, 
did you? You must of though, with that coat.” 

“I fell, you see. . . . Down behind the evergreens, 
I got . . .” She let the phrase dangle, hoping the woman 
would infer that her buggy was behind the trees, and not 
that she had fallen there. “You’re the hired girl, are 
you?” she parried. 

“I’m the housekeeper,” the other returned, coldly. 

“Oh, I beg your pardon. I thought maybe—” 

“Mrs. Gardewine . . . Mrs. Gardewine . . . close the 
door, can’t you?” The heavily-toned words came from 
the interior of the house, and then, nearer and louder: 
“Who’s out there, anyway? Any one to see me? Why 
didn’t you ask them to come in?” With the last words a 

[129] 


man stood in the middle of the big doorway, and Arlie, 
one foot on the first step, turned to look at him. He 
was dark, of medium build, with blue eyes that looked 
steadily at her—too steadily. His mustache was a 
bristly black, touched lightly with gray, and as agressive 
as the chin. 

“It’s some one to see Herbert,” Mrs. Gardewine said. 
Arlie shifted her eyes. 

“You want to see Herbert, eh?” The voice was no 
longer irritable, but not kind. “Herbert’s in California.” 

“Yes, that’s what she said.” Arlie nodded at Mrs. 
Gardewine. “I’m sorry to trouble you, Mr. Shuman.” 
She was at the bottom of the steps now. “I’ll be going 
back.” 

“She walked out,” said Mrs. Gardewine. “Just look 
at her coat.” 

“Oh, that don’t matter,” Arlie laughed. “I’m used to 
thatr 

“You say you nralked out here?” Mr. Shuman in¬ 
quired incredulously, advancing to the top of the step to 
look at her closely. 

“She said it,” Arlie replied; “I didn’t, but it’s true; 
I did. I didn’t know it was so muddy when I started.” 

“But my girl,” said Mr. Shuman, “you can’t walk 
back. Look at your feet. They’re soaked. You’ll 
catch your death of cold.” 

“Oh no! I’m used to this. I do all sorts of tramp- 

• _ 

ing. 

But Mr. Shuman had her by the arm and was pulling 
her up the steps into the house, where he told Mrs. 
Gardewine to take care of her. In the kitchen Mrs. 
Gardewine soon had her warming her feet by the register, 
with her shoes and stockings drying by the stove. Then 
she insisted that Arlie remove her skirt and petticoat, 
put on an old wrapper, and be comfortable. 

“Oh nor Arlie responded. “I’d rather dry them just 

[130] 


like this. They’re not very wet, really, and the heat 
just pours up here, and I can get ’em dry in just no time.” 
She pulled her skirt lower, enclosing the register, partly 
to dry the skirt and partly to conceal from Mrs. Garde- 
wine the soaked and frayed edges of her under¬ 
wear. Besides, a change might involve a supervisory 
eye. 

Then, while Mrs. Gardewine returned to the prepara¬ 
tion of the meal, Arlie looked about the kitchen. It was 
immaculate—from the snowy cabinet by her side to the 
large porcelain sink, fluff of tea-towels on the wooden 
fingers above and the white table beyond. Even the 
enormous range shone in clean black splendor, and the 
light from the wide windows fell freshly on the blue and 
white linoleum. It was far more costly than the com¬ 
bined best of the Gelston household; and it was the place 
where Herb had been, where Mrs. Shuman—tall, imper¬ 
ial, dark—gave orders. “Yet what right,” Arlie asked 
herself, “have I here if Herb don’t want to marry me? 
If he does, all right, but if he don’t . . .” That contin¬ 
gency she did not examine: the rushing warmth that 
caressed and billowed about her was too drowsy, too 
good. ... If she weren’t careful she’d be asleep. Then 
the cold within and the encompassing heat sent through 
her what was at once a shiver of cold and a pulsation of 
delight. 

Mrs. Gardewine returned after a short absence. “Mr. 
Shuman says you’re to have lunch with him as soon as 
your things are dry. Then he’s going to drive you in to 
town. ... He says,” she added, and spoke as if it were 
her own thought too, “that he can’t for the life of him 
see why you’d walk all the way out here on a day like 
this. ... You musta wanted to see Herbert pretty bad.” 
She was glancing at her sidewise. 

It was hard to struggle through the warmth in which 
she so ponderously lay to shake off such a suggestion: 

[I3i] 


“Oh no ... I didn’t want to see him as bad as that. 
I just thought I’d run out. . . .” 

“Run out ? Humph ! On a day like this !” 

“N—no, I didn’t mean just that. You see, I didn’t 
know it was so far. Some one told me it was just over 
the hill, just at the edge of town.” 

“It’s three miles and a quarter from the depot to the 
front gate.” 

“I thought it was thirty before I got here. But you 
know how it is: after I’d gone so far it seemed easier to 
go on than turn back.” 

“Well, maybe, though I bet 7 ’d of gone back. . . . 
How’d you happen to be in town?” 

At this Arlie contemplated her billowing skirt. “In 
town?” she repeated. “Oh—I was doing some business 
for Mr. Tritchler—down at Coon Falls. He owns the 
Bijou there, you know, and wanted me to come up and 
see about something for him.” 

“Who’d you see, here?” 

“It was, it was . . . well, you know I’ve forgotten the 
name already. I think it’s the man who owns the pic¬ 
ture show, though.” 

“We ain’t got no picture show in Lawson,” said Mrs. 
Gardewine. 

“You haven't! Why, why of all things. . . . But 
then, of course. I guess it was just about starting a pic¬ 
ture show that my trip was about. I just had to—had to 
give the man some papers and get some from him. . . . 
It must be awful slow not to have a picture show here. 
. . . Don’t you find it sorta slow?” 

Mrs. Gardewine’s replies were not consoling, for the 
lunch was nearly ready. “I guess your stockings are dry 
now,” she said, in the midst of her preparations, as she 
felt them and tossed them over. “Put ’em on, and some 
slippers in the entry there, and come on in to lunch.” 

Briefly Arlie rehearsed the vague stories she had given 

[132] 


Mrs. Gardewine, that she might give a connected account 
if Mr. Shuman questioned her, and one that would tally 
with what she had already told. 

She felt out of place in the dining-room with its blue 
rug, polished floor, and dulled massive table spread with 
doilies, gleaming with silver and glass, and touched 
brightly with the color of china. Mr. Shuman, she no¬ 
ticed before they sat down, was inclined to be stout, and 
he looked, she reflected, much more like a banker than 
like a farmer. 

“I’m not sure I caught your name,” he said to her, and 
Arlie searched the matter-of-fact tones for kindness, find¬ 
ing none. 

“I don’t think I told you,” she answered, “but it’s Gel- 
ston, Arlie Gelston. I live at Coon Falls.” 

“Oh yes, Miss Gelston. I think I’ve heard of you 
before.” 

And then, as he served her plate, he took from her, 
a (ittle more smoothly, the same misinformation she had 
given Mrs. Gardewine. This time, however, Arlie was 
prompter, and did not wait to be questioned on all par¬ 
ticulars, hoping as she offered them that the fact she was 
offering them would in a measure make them seem the 
truth. She spoke, too, of a deed; of how funny Gran’pa 
Tritchler was, not trusting the mails and all; and by 
much laughing succeeded in not being hurt by the look 
of scepticism that did not wholly leave Mr. Shuman’s 
face. 

“You’d have saved yourself a lot of trouble, Miss Gel¬ 
ston,” he said finally, “if you’d called up before you left 
town.” Arlie was beginning to dislike the blue eyes that 
changed neither color nor expression as they looked per¬ 
sistently into hers. She felt very soft and young be¬ 
neath that blue inquiry. It bothered her to meet both 
his eyes—they were so far apart. She looked at her 
plate. 


[133] 


“Yes,” he repeated, “a call might have saved a good 
deal of work.” 

“I didn’t think of ’phoning at all,” she answered 
meekly. “I don’t know why.” And, after a pause, re¬ 
peated, “But you know, I thought it was just a little way 
at first, just at the edge of town practically.” 

Mr. Shuman smiled. “Who told you that?” 

“The man at the depot, it was.” 

“I see.” 

They ate. 

“You don’t have a farmhouse here, do you? It’s more 
like a city place. If you didn’t look out the window 
you’d think it was somebody’s in town.” 

“Yes. . . . You knew Herbert pretty well, did 
you ?” 

“Oh yes! He used to come to take me for rides last 
summer. Real often. He was awfully nice.” 

“And so you thought, since you were in town, that 
you’d just drop in to see him, eh?” 

He was pressing her too closely. What could he sus¬ 
pect? Surely he couldn’t know—he had never seen her 
before. And yet, it was kind of crazy to come suddenly 
on a person, as she had, and with stories that confused 
more than they explained, and required indefinite series 
of props. 

“Yes, that’s it,” she answered; and then said: “It was 
all right, wasn’t it, my coming out? I mean, it was po¬ 
lite—maybe ?” 

Mr. Shuman intently pursued a piece of scalloped po¬ 
tato with his fork, and made no answer. 

“Well?” Arlie persisted. 

“Why . . . yes . . . certainly. That was all right. 
Of course.” Little more was said until the meal was 
finished. Then he pushed back his chair. “I’ll have the 
carriage brought around now and we’ll drive in.” 

[134] 


“Oh, don’t drive in just to take me. I can walk all 
right. Honest I can.” 

“Of course you can’t. I was going in later anyway. 
Mr. Garde wine’s bringing the team now. You’d better 
get your things from Mrs. Gardewine. I’ll be ready to 
go in about twenty minutes.” 

As she left the room Arlie felt his eyes upon her back, 
and she did not leave the kitchen until her hat was on 
and the coat firmly buttoned down its entire length. 

On the ride to Lawson their talk was strained, for 
Arlie was then clearly conscious that her account had not 
satisfied Mr. Shuman, and his silence was a sign to her 
that he was willing to let her know, in that way, what he 
was thinking. Elaborately she evaded further mention 
of her walk, skirting danger as she inquired about Herb 
and hoped that Mrs. Shuman was getting better. He 
answered curtly, drew on his strong cigar, and urged the 
horses on. His finely gloved hands held the reins firmly; 
there was something of Herb—though uncouthly and 
largely like—in his movements, and particularly in the 
silence which held his displeasure as a prickly surface. 
But for the first mile Arlie had chattered amiably, glad 
she was escaping so easily, after all. At the crossroads, 
when she realized that he was too heavy to move into re¬ 
sponse, she sank into silence. 

At the station Mr. Shuman descended stiffly and turned 
to help her out. That was polite, she thought, and like 
Herb in some of his moments. But not at all like Herb 
was what he did next. 

“I think,” he said, “that I’ll just go in and tell that 
agent exactly how far out my place is. You said it was 
the station agent who told you it was just on the edge 
of town, didn’t you?” 

Arlie, who had started to thank him for the ride, 
stopped. “Why yes, but—” 

[13s] 



“You see,” he went on, his eyes heavily upon her, and 
his solid form in the fur overcoat bulking large and pow¬ 
erful, “you see, I don’t want any one else misdirected as 
you were.” 

“Oh no,” Arlie cried, “you mustn't ask him. You 
mustn't! He wouldn’t remember. ... I don’t think it’s 
the same man in there now, anyway. I . . .” She 
stopped. His face held satisfaction, and he was making 
no move either to hitch the team or to go to the station. 

“All right,” he said, and climbed into his seat. “I 
guess you know best.” 

“I want ... to thank you, Mr. Shuman,” she stam¬ 
mered after him as he settled himself beneath the dark 
robes, “for bringing me in. It was awfully good of 
you.” 

He grunted, set his lips tightly about his cigar, and 
drove off. From the wheels mud dropped wetly into the 
mire, and the body of the carriage held a bark of mud. 

6 

The connection at Shelley Junction on the return trip 
was a close one, and by four-thirty Arlie was back in 
Coon Falls. She dropped from the end of the train 
to go around the back of the station lest her father see 
her. As she plodded on to the Bijou to do her belated 
cleaning she was experiencing a chagrin more painfully 
searching than any she had known. She had leapt so 
unsuspectingly into the trap Mr. Shuman had laid for 
her at the last that she writhed under the memory. 
Now he knew she had lied, that she had known all the 
time how far it was to the farm, and had nevertheless 
walked those miserable miles. And if he knew that much, 
those eyes of his would see disastrously through the 
flimsy stories she had told. Just what was a deed, any¬ 
way? And if he saw that much he might know that she 

[136] 


had come all the way from Coon Falls to Lawson to see 
Herb. But what would he think of it, and what would 
he feel toward her? And if he guessed the truth, what 
would he feel toward his son? 

In the rounding swiftness of this she could make out 
only that it was highly probable Herb would hear of her, 
and if Herb knew—would he act? And how? 

The inner din deafened her to the words Tritchler 
threw at her. Even Somers’s words were cold, but all 
of a piece with the day. The work had never seemed so 
hard, and not the easiest of it was the thought of the 
fight she must wage with her mother when at last she 
reached home. More stories to think up. But maybe 
she could get her mother to fighting with her father. 




[137] 


CHAPTER X 


WHERE TWO OR THREE ARE GATHERED 

I 

Before she left the Bijou, Arlie drew Somers aside. “I 
want you to help me a little,” she said. 

“Sure. . . .” He looked at her with waiting eyes over 
his cigarette smoke; and unsteady with fatigue she lost 
continuing words for a moment to be absorbed into that 
look. 

“I ... I had to go up to—to a town today. That’s 
why I was late. And I don’t want ma ta know. So 
would you back me if I told her you sent me up to 
Whitestone to—oh, I don’t know—get some films, 
maybe ?” 

“Always glad to tell a little fib for a friend,” he an¬ 
swered. “She called up, your mother did, about one- 
thirty. Tritchler answered. Said you hadn’t been here, 
I guess. But he needn’t of knew I sent you, see? . . . 
Sure, that’s all right. Only let us know next time you 
go on one of these joy-rides.” 

“Thanks . . . awfully.” She went slowly out the 
door and home. 


(< 

ma, 


2 

Well then, call Somers up if you don’t believe me, 
” she was saying half an hour later. But she had 

[138] 


carefully produced this only after a seeming reluctance 
to have her mother telephone. If she told her at once 
to telephone, she had reasoned, her mother would suspect 
an agreement of some kind. 

“Huh!” said Mrs. Gelston. 

It had worked. 


3 

Oddly, in the days that followed, Arlie suffered more 
from the thought of what Mr. Shuman would be think¬ 
ing of her than she did from the burning images of days 
to come. To the future she was suddenly returned one 
morning when by mistake she had turned down Main 
Street instead of taking the usual side street. Mrs. 
Nolte’s eyes fastened on her waist—a poking inquiry of 
pig-brown eyes—and then their separate directions took 
them on; but in the soft dark angle of a store window 
she saw reflected Mrs. Nolte’s head turned over her 
shoulder. Arlie fled down the block unseeing, and at the 
next corner turned back home. 

“Forgot my handkerchief,” she called to her mother, 
and safe in her room tried to draw her corset tighter; 
but when it was tighter she could breathe only with ab¬ 
rupt difficulty. “I can’t do it,” and she loosened the 
strings. “It’ll have to be,” she murmured. As if in 
gratitude the child within her stirred. She wanted to cry. 

From then on she dreaded the work in the morning 
more than at night, for in the glare of snowy daylight 
she had to pass . . . people. Each was a separately 
painful encounter. As she approached a person, espe¬ 
cially a woman, her whole thought would be: “Will she 
notice?” In every glance she found a leer, and in every 
greeting a cold, gleeful triumph. In stiller, more rational 
moments she convinced herself that no one really knew. 
If they did, Tritchler would fire her. At worst a few 
might suspect. 


[139] 


Her lethargic contentment, however, had passed. It 
was as if the barrier she had erected against heathenish 
insinuations was about to dissolve out of existence. 
Shortly now she would be alone. Already she could 
hear the sound of voices, thick with rich matter. The 
venomous forms were no longer high and ethereally 
green and painful, but on the ground about her, ad¬ 
vancing. 


4 

All people were dangerous; they existed. But they 
held all comfort with themselves. The more she feared 
them the more she wanted what, when they were to¬ 
gether, she had discovered they gave. On Sunday night 
she went to the revival meetings, hoping Miss Haggerty 
would not be there. 

The church was already filled when she arrived, and 
they were just beginning the first hymn. Behind the 
screen of backs she was ushered to a seat by Ray Jarvis. 
He frowned at her as she slipped into the pew. “Maybe 
it’s because I’m late,” she thought, and settled her coat 
collar farther back. 

With the rapping of a baton on the pulpit a little man 
on the platform stopped the singing. Wisps of hay- 
colored hair tossed on his big bald head. “Now, now,” 
he said, “let’s have that verse again. Let’s make this old 
church tremble. Come on now!” Pacing the platform 
as he waved at them he led them into: 

“Count your many blessings, count them one by one, 

Count your many blessings, see what God hath done.” 

Grouped in a semicircle behind the song leader the 
ministers opened their mouths, from which no sounds 
seemed to issue. They looked a little foolish, Arlie 
thought, and flat-faced and sleek beside the evangelist, 

[140] 


Reverend Murkleman, whom she recognized from the 
placards in the store windows. He was a lank, cadaver¬ 
ous man with narrow forehead and great jaw. Sitting 
in the central chair he clasped his hands tightly and kept 
his intense eyes on the foot of the pulpit. It was plain 
to all that he was receiving from an inner—an outer?— 
source, direct and articulate inspiration. Power would 
issue from that man. . . . 

Belle was in the choir, her yellow hair fluffier than 
ever, and her teeth flashing. Beside her stood Edna 
Dexter, then Angie Garfield, Althea Holcomb ... al¬ 
most all the high school girls. 

“Here, here!” The song leader rapped again for si¬ 
lence. “You folks know what the Good Book says: 
‘Make a joyful noise unto the Lord/ Now that’s put 
there for the benefit of you that can’t sing. If you can't 
sing, why make a noise anyway.” 

The congregation stirred, the ministers beamed. But 
the Reverend Murkleman roused from his withdrawn 
contemplation only to smile, wanly. He had heard it 
before. 

And then they sang, Arlie with them. “That’s it! 
Keep it up, you’re doing fine!” the song leader shouted, 
and waved his baton more decisively than ever. Com¬ 
monalty flowed in almost palpable currents, and Arlie, 
long isolated, felt herself borne away from trouble to¬ 
ward some dark ancient home she had forgotten but was 
beginning to remember. She forgot those around her 
and sang herself toward that home. When her section 
was slow with its verse as the others waited to join in 
at the chorus, her voice was unhesitant and clear above 
the subdued accompaniment of those near her. She 
did not recognize the blurred faces turning to look. The 
singing stopped. She sat down perspiring, and, before 
she remembered, started to take off her coat. 

Hastily she returned it to its place. The Reverend 

[141] 


Pingrey was praying, with a voice that soared above his 
usual cadences only to fall into them at the end of a 
sentence. The evangelist had dropped upon his knees 
before his chair, as, tardily, did the Reverend Foster and 
Reverend Burpee. Many of the congregation had leaned 
their heads upon the backs of the pews. Funny . . . she 
hadn’t seen them do that before. Then she was doing it 
herself, though the position cost her an uncomfortable 
shortening of breath. The prayer drowsed over her. 
Surreptitiously she slipped her hand into the pocket of 
her coat to find a dime for the collection. 

Comfortable again after the collection she listened with 
foreboding eagerness to the text, which, after a lanky 
shake and pause for silence—caught in its trough of di¬ 
minuendo—the Reverend Murkleman announced: “Come 
unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will 
give you rest. . . . For my yoke is easy and my burden 
is light.” He paced the platform while the girls of the 
choir settled themselves and the organist, after arranging 
her music on the rack, slipped into an inconspicuous seat. 
The ministers dropped into new attitudes of comfort. 

“All ye that labor and are heavy laden . . .” Rever¬ 
end Murkleman reiterated. 

“Isn’t his voice a little hoarse?” some one murmured. 

“He’s been preaching so much. Such a strain!” came 
the answer. 

The Reverend Murkleman was running his bony fin¬ 
gers through his hair, already in confusion. “Come unto 
me, and I will give you rest, for my yoke is easy and 
my burden light. We want to remember, folks, that Christ 
wasn’t speaking of an actual yoke, like your fathers 
and grandfathers used to drive oxen with in Iowa fifty 
or seventy-five years ago. That’s what Professor Bud- 
long would call a figure of speech. Isn’t it, Professor?” 
Murkleman pointed a long finger at Professor Budlong’s 
top-heavy head, protruding above his neighbors. All eyes 

[142] 


followed the finger to see Professor Budlong’s confirm¬ 
ing nod. 

“That’s right—a figure of speech. And what Jesus 
Christ meant by that was just this: that any one of you 
that’s sunk so far down into the fleshpots of Egypt or 
Coon Falls—for you got ’em here too, I know what I’m 
talking about—why, all you got to do is to climb out of 
the mire that’s sucking you deeper and deeper, and get 
on the old road once more and pull a little; and after a 
while you won’t feel the yoke galling your neck quite so 
much as you expected it to. No sir!’’ And he jerked 
himself to the other side of the platform to crouch with 
outstretched arm and, after a dramatic hush, to ask in 
a terrifying whisper: “Why?” Another jerk of his head, 
and his hair described a short black arc. “I’ll tell you 
why.” The “why” was again prolonged and terrifying. 
Arlie was nervous. Then, in stentorian tone: “It’s be¬ 
cause Jesus Christ Himself is pulling in the other half 
of that yoke. He’s the other member of the team. He’s 
pulling right along with you. He’s carrying His share 
of the load. That’s why He calls it ‘my yoke.’ ‘Because 
my yoke is easy.’ Easy, because He’s pulling with you, 
and because the burden you pull is one that two are pul¬ 
ling. That’s why.” The “why” uncoiled itself and shot 
smoothly, keenly out, snakewise. 

“Now all you business men who think you’re going to 
shake your wings in the next world because you can 
crank a car in this one; or you farmers that think because 
the corn you raise is tall and big and goes eighty bushels 
to the acre, and you think you’re going to ride into 
Heaven on the back of a Poland China hog—I tell you 
you’re not. Not unless you got Christ behind the counter 
with you, or Christ along with you when you plow. No 
sir! And you housewives who get irritable and het up 
over your work and nag at your husbands because you 
can’t have a new Wilton rug—I tell you when you got 

[143] 


Christ washing the dishes with you, the water’s too good 
for angels to drink of. And the reason so many of you 
fret your lives away is that you ain’t got any religion 
in you. 

“What’s the matter with the young folks? Why are 
they going to hell as fast as they can get there ? Because 
they got no more thought of Christ in their lives than 
they have of the first King of China. 

“Why, I remember a young girl brought up in the finest 
Christian home it was ever my fortune to enter. A fine 
old father she had, and a mother who was the most 
sainted woman I ever met—except my wife. Never a 
day dawned but they didn’t read their chapter out of the 
Book of Books, and never a meal was eaten in that house 
without thanks to the Lord that out of His abundance 
had provided it. Why, everything there was fine and 
generous and Christian, and the girl was sent away to 
college, to a university, and had plenty to spend, too, 
while she was getting her diploma. And when she got 
it, her dear old father and mother gave her a trip to Eu¬ 
rope. Went abroad, yes sir. Everything a girl could 
possibly ask. And yet . . . and yet . . . when I saw 
that girl the last time it was in a cell in the Cook County 
Jail in Chicago, where she’d been put for forgery, and 
where she’d ought to been put long before she was, for 
sins I’m not going to talk about tonight. 

“Why was she there? 

“Because she let Christ out of her life and the Devil 
in. Because she wasn’t content with the old-fashioned 
ox yoke and instead of pulling had to be pulled, and 
driven around the country by a lot of gay young bucks 
who’d ought to been horse whipped. Because she wasn’t 
content to have Christ in her life, working along with 
her. No sir! Because she thought His yoke too galling 
and the burden too much to bear. 

“Friends”—he lowered his voice to a hush of whisper 

[144] 


—“friends, I’ll tell you one thing: The yoke and the bur¬ 
den Christ puts on you are the loveliest, easiest things 
you’re going to find in this world. And if you don’t find 
’em in this world, God help you in the next, for He’s 
the only one who can.” 

The Reverend Murkleman paused to drink before 
resuming. 

“Two years ago this morning, at six-thirty, just as the 
dawn was beginning to break, I stood on a little platform 
not so big as the one I’m standing on now. There was 
a trapdoor cut in that platform, and on it stood a young 
man with his hands tied behind his back, a black cap on 
his head, and a noose around his neck, waiting for that 
door to fall. Yet five years before I’d of bet every 
penny I possessed that that same young man would go 
far, that he would do great things, great things for him¬ 
self, for the world, and for the Lord. And that young 
man said to me before they led him out that morning, 
‘O my God, Murkleman, don’t let them forget Jesus 
Christ! I forgot him, and here I am.’ 

“‘Tell them not to forget Jesus Christ! . . ” 

Murkleman’s twisted face glared passionately at them 
from the swaying end of his bent body. “And yet you 
tell me that His yoke is too hard for your poor feeble 
necks and His burden too heavy for your poor feeble 
backs. They’ll be feeble, God knows, after the load the 
Devil’s going to lay on ’em.” 

Arlie saw only the roused lean face, colored with the 
strain of his intense effort. Hands pressed together, 
head bent forward, she silently labored with him, living 
through, as in an instant’s microcosm, the lives he chron¬ 
icled. They had gone out, those lives, all out into Christ- 
less horror. 

When had she ever thought of these things before? 
She had treated Sunday School, when her mother had 
spasmodically made her go, as a joke, a bore. She had 

[145] 


seldom gone to church. Her Bible—where was it? And 
the yoke of Christ was easy, so easy; and she was in a 
mire worse than any he had named. Where was she go¬ 
ing? Where, after all the years of her life, fading into 
deeper horror, would she end? She lifted her eyes sud¬ 
denly to the great sign across the front of the church, 
which asked in red letters: Where Will You Spend Eter¬ 
nity? Was hell even now opening to receive her into its 
violent heart? He hadn’t spoken of hell, but she knew 
. . . she knew. . . . And the baby within her, what of 
it ? She would be giving it nothing, nothing. Herb, too, 
she must win over to Christ, for in Christ alone could 
they find forgiveness. Or could she find it there alone? 
Herb must look to himself, out in California. He would 
not be thinking of Christ now, Herb wouldn’t . . . 
Then his face, keen and brown, with eyes that dreamed 
at her—he was as clear as if she saw him across the road 
in sunlight, with California sunlight metallically brilliant 
on every contour of his face. . . . 

“ ‘Come unto me, and I will give you rest.’ Rest 
from the sins that hold your feet and clog your heart. 
Aren’t you going to give Him a chance, now, now, be¬ 
fore it’s too late, and your last chance is gone? Christ 
forgives and forgives—seventy times seven—but I want 
to tell you that you can wear out the patience of the Lord 
God of Hosts. He isn’t so patient as His Son, and when 
He strikes, He strikes suddenly. And oh! the bliss of 
the rest He would give to you, out of his boundless com¬ 
passionate heart would give to the worst of you, will give 
to you in the next five minutes if only you will . . . 

“A little music there, Miss Organist.” 

The song leader appeared with his baton; his voice was 
hushed and solemn now. “One sixty-seven,” he an¬ 
nounced, and the choir softly leading, the congregation 
joined in singing, “Why not say Yes tonight, why not 
say Yes?” 


[h6] 


The evangelist stretched forth his hands: “Aren’t you 
coming?” he pleaded. “Aren’t you coming now? Now? 
Are you going to be deaf forever to the only voice that 
calls to you across the whole wide world to lift yourself 
out of the muck and into the great and the perfect rest 
that He alone can give you? Just be remembering that 
He'll be pulling with you, right in the same yoke, and 
His burden is the lightest one of all for you who are 
heavy laden now with the weight of your sin and your 
shame.” 

Subdued stir of people. Strain of expectancy. Across 
the aisle: Mrs. Nolte with her arm around her eleven- 
year-old son as gray-haired Mrs. Holcomb pleaded. The 
boy’s serious face was perplexed as his mother cried, si¬ 
lently, into her handkerchief. . . . Some one rising to 
whisper in the ear of one in front of him. Dullness of 
coming tears, and all converging to a smooth surface of 
desire. Breakage ! Some one—Ben Medberry—was go¬ 
ing forward. . . . There was some one else. . . . And 
Willie Nolte, gently assisted to the aisle, was moving 
slowly pulpitward, looking back at his mother, who still 
wept. 

Murkleman’s long arm was extended in a great hand¬ 
shaking with Ben Medberry. And they were singing, all 
of them: 

“Just as I am, without one plea, 

Save that His blood was shed for me. . . 

Weeping around her, behind her . . . and very slowly, 
with clumsy slowness, her hands finding the ends of the 
pews for guidance, her coat thrown back, her handker¬ 
chief seeking her eyes, Arlie was going down the aisle, 
crying softly as they sang. 

The journey lengthened itself out. It was far. Heads 
and heads, and inquiring white faces to be passed and 

[147] 


more faces turning. Then out upon the carpeted open¬ 
ing before the platform, which, after incredible time, 
she reached. He gave her hand but a fillip, as he turned 
to exhort more. Conscious of a hitch, but not knowing 
just what, she found the bench on which sat nine or ten 
others, and tried to control her weeping. In a moment 
the Reverend Pingrey was at her side. Did she under¬ 
stand the great step she was taking? Did she know 
what it meant—going to church, constant prayer, taking 
a Sunday School class, if there was need? 

“I’d be glad to ... do anything you want me ... if 
only you’d let me,” she sobbed. Didn’t he know, or did 
he? He must, but they were one with Christ now, and 
he was helping her by giving her a task. 

“My dear girl, of course we’ll let you,” he was saying. 
“We’ll want you to.” Wagging near her his head with 
its scanty reddish-gray hair and wrinkled nose, he pro¬ 
duced a card and pencil. “Just fill it out, Arlie. I sup¬ 
pose your church preference will be Presbyterian, of 
course.” She nodded. 

“There now.” He took the card. “Reverend Murkle- 
man wants to offer prayer. We’ll all kneel together.” 

Shutting out the blare of light and sinking into the 
warm darkness of her own arms, she listened to the open¬ 
ing of the prayer—“Those looking for the first time on 
the white face of the Savior, come now to His arms for 
rest, and to accept His yoke for all eternity. . . .” 

More she did not hear, for she was trying to dis¬ 
lodge from the still sunlit height of distance the calm 
face of Herb, and substitute for it the white face of 
Jesus Christ. The effort collapsed everything, and she 
saw only the weird colors on her own closed eyelids, and 
knew only the puffy breathing of Reverend Pingrey, 
kneeling beside her; then lapsed away. . . . She was 
swung through a drone of darkness, and was rushed 
dizzyingly from pole to pole of Christ’s face, calm and 

[148] 


growing severe, and Herb’s as he had bent over the side 
of the car so long ago to say good-bye. Helpless, she 
was spun between them, reaching neither, sinking from 
both— 

They were getting up. The prayer was over. She 
was on her feet, beset by a long line of people pressing 
on to shake her hand and the hands of the dozen others 
on the bench. The Reverend Murkleman was talking 
unconcernedly with the song leader, who was putting on 
his overcoat. The line thinned out, broke into groups of 
two and three, and Arlie started up the aisle toward the 
door, where several men in overcoats were standing. 

“Oh, wait a minute, Arlie.” Mrs. Holcomb came up 
behind. “I didn’t get a chance to congratulate you. On 
taking the step. It was fine of you. For I been a little 
afraid, Arlie, lately, that you were forgetting the Sav¬ 
ior.” A hush came into her voice as she mentioned the 
Name, and she put an arm around Arlie. 

“I wanted to do what was right, Mrs. Holcomb. I 
ain’t been very good, I guess. But I’m going to be. I 
know I can be better now. . . . Isn’t he fine?” 

Mrs. Holcomb was not quite sure to whom the “he” 
referred. “Oh, Reverend Murkleman, you mean?” she 
asked, slowing their walk down to a crawl. “Yes, he 
certainly is. Fine and noble. I fairly worship him. 
We all do, for that matter. And I’m so glad about little 
Willie Nolte. He’s been giving his mother so much 
trouble. Smoking and swearing. But he took the step to¬ 
night.” She sighed. “I was coming over to you next, 
Arlie, after I worked with him. Only you’d al¬ 
ready gone forward when I got around to it. It’s 
better that way, I suppose, to go of your own 
vol—because you want to go, you know.” Her arm 
encircled Arlie more firmly, and Arlie felt loved, pro¬ 
tected. She leaned a little closer; she was tired now. 
And how fine and straight Mrs. Holcomb was, after 

[149] 


all. Her gray hair was like silver wire, fuzzy and 
white. Then she felt the arm about her waist— 
the arm had moved and she turned frightened eyes 
to look into Mrs. Holcomb’s, which, behind her glasses, 
had the faraway, abstracted look of one who is feeling in 
a bag for a particular article. 

Arlie tore from her side the inquiring hand, walked 
quickly through the black swinging-doors, down the slip¬ 
pery steps, across the street under the arclight, and 
plunged into the shadows beyond. Then, in panic and 
sobbing anger, she ran. 


5 

Her mother was sitting in the dining-room, reading 
the remnants of the Sunday paper. Panting, Arlie 
dropped into a chair opposite her. An old impulse to 
bare her troubles to her mother, long years in abeyance 
now, broke to the surface. She wanted consolation, in¬ 
dignant words about Mrs. Holcomb, promise of repri¬ 
sal, and belief in its efficacy. 

“Why Arlie, what’s the matter with you?’’ Mrs. Gel- 
ston raised widened eyes from her paper. “You’re red as 
a beet. What’s the matter with you? And panting like 
a dog. Now don’t cry. . . . Here, take mine.” Arlie 
dabbed at her eyes with her mother’s handkerchief. 

“It’s that Mrs. Holcomb,” she choked. 

“Mrs. Holcomb? What’s she done now?” 

“She ain’t done nothing, except to ... to insult me. 
That’s what she done. At church.” She was telling a 
dangerous too much, but could not restrain herself. 

“Well, what?” Mrs. Gelston had laid down her paper 
to look her demand at her daughter, whose face was 
almost hidden under her hat as she picked with a fork 
at the Sunday tablecloth. “Don’t do that,” her mother 
said. “Want to pick a hole in it?” 

[150] 


Arlie laid the fork aside. It had been a mistake not to 
go directly to her room. How could she get out of it 
now? “She said that I hadn’t been good, that I was too 
wild . . . that . . .” 

“Huh! I don’t see what there is in that to make you 
blubber. Though I will say she’d do well to watch her 
own brats a little more.” 

“Yes, and I told her as much.” 

Mrs. Gelston’s eyes gleamed. “You did, honest?” 
Arlie nodded. “Well, good for you, that’s all I got to 
say! . . . Take your coat off, it’s too hot in here. I hate 
to see the ugly old thing anyway. . . . Take it off,” she 
added, as Arlie sat motionless. 

“All right.” She slipped it off, exposing her rather 
soiled middy. 

“Was there many there?” 

“Packed. I could hardly get a seat.” 

“How many got converted tonight? ... I heard Mrs. 
Lowrey saying this man Murkleman wasn’t saving as 
many souls per sermon as her husband used to. But 
then she would say that. Said he converted sixty-five 
one night, and I guess this fellow ain’t got above thirty 
all told. There wasn’t none the night I went, and only 
two the night before. How many you say there was to¬ 
night ?” 

“You didn’t give me a chance to say, but there was 
about a dozen.” 

“A dozen. Huh! Wish I’d been there. Just my luck 
to miss the big night. Who was they?” Mrs. Gelston 
gathered cake crumbs from the table, on which Arlie’s 
hands were nervously clasped. 

“Well, I was one of ’em.” 

The crumbs were arrested a foot from the mouth open 
to receive them; the arm fell gradually back, but the 
mouth staid open. At that, through her confusion, Ar¬ 
lie began to laugh. The mouth went shut. 

[151] 


“You!” And then, as if in revenge for the bitter 
mirth Arlie had suppressed too late, Mrs. Gelston threw 
back her great round yellow head, opened her mouth, and 
laughed as Arlie had never heard her before. The head 
rolled forward and rolled back, as if it were gargling an 
immense liquid and throwing invisible fountains at the 
ceiling. It became the sole focus of Arlie’s vision, seen 
at the end of a whirling funnel of darkness, a yellow- 
white distortion that was crackling under the light and 
then expanding dizzily, with the table elevated again into 
the place of light only to be absorbed in the spread of 
the face. Sound, harshly thunderous, as of ponderous 
wheels grinding composed the all of existence beneath 
whose weight she struggled, against omnipotent onset of 
light and sound, held to the breast of extinction. She 
wanted to call her mother. She could not speak. Be¬ 
neath the click of the perpetual round of the whole 
world become hostile she could not move a finger. Final 
defeat. Her very self beaten into formlessness . . . yet 
still she grayly lived . . . lifting . . . dizzy world 
steadying. Steady a moment. Lifted out of the depths 
. . . brightness again, and voices dimming . . . corner 
of the table, ceiling below her . . . toward it she was 
falling. 

Her mother’s face, eyes wide with terror, bent over 
her. She herself was rasping as she breathed. She was 
on the floor, gazing dully at her mother. A mopping on 
her forehead . . . cold wet. 

“Arlie, Arlie, are you all right? Tell me.” 

Arlie stared and nodded. A white some one in the 
doorway . . . her father, in his nightgown. Another ef¬ 
fort: he was holding a basin of w?ter, the blue and 
white basin. 

“Can you get up now?” 

She shook her head and fell away into blankness, aware 

[152] 


only that she breathed, and then her father was lifting 
her to a chair. 

“Give me d—water,” she murmured. A hand ad¬ 
vanced a glass. She drank cold vitality. “I guess I 
fainted, sort of.” 

“You sure did, girl. Are you all right now?” It was 
her father, a kindly tone. “Just sit there. Then I’ll 
help you up to bed. You’re wore out.” 

“My God,” her mother was saying as she returned to 
the kitchen door wiping her hands on a towel. “My 
God, I thought you was dead. Just screamed and flopped 
over like, right off the chair. Said she got religion, Oli¬ 
ver, at the revival meeting.” 

“Did you, Arlie?” her father inquired, and to her nod 
said, “Good for you.” 

That gave her strength. “I guess I’m ready to go up, 
pa.” He grasped her arm and helped her up the stairs, 
Mrs. Gelston following. 

The bed brought stupor, black and inert, from which 
she wakened to find herself in her nightgown between the 
sheets. Her mother was sitting by the bed, shadowily 
bulky in a blanket against the dim light from the hall. 

“Are you awake, Arlie?” 

“Yes, ma.” 

“Arlie,” Mrs. Gelston bent forward with a whisper. 
“Arlie Gelston, are you going to have a baby? Now 
don’t you lie to me.” 

She looked at her mother with darkened hueless eyes 
that were aware now of all that had happened, eyes that 
were so unbearably aware that when she answered “Yes” 
Mrs. Gelston could avoid them only by bursting into 
tears. Back and forth she rocked, as not long before 
she had laughed, and gave out a muted cry, “My God, my 
God.” For minutes Arlie continued to look at her, but 
when the rocking and the sobs and the low cries did not 

[153] 


cease, she turned on her side. Nor to the long out¬ 
pour of abuse that followed did she return any answer. 

6 

It must have been one o’clock before Mrs. Gelston 
left the room, hoping that “your father don’t know yet,” 
and saying Arlie could tell him herself. Throughout the 
hours Arlie had not said a word, despite the shakings 
ending in a slap that her mother had given. When the 
door closed Arlie turned back and reworked the names 
her mother had used. Her child was to be a bastard. 
She herself was no better than a prostitute. She—who 
that night had vowed herself a Christian, and on whom 
the still face of Christ had shone, receiving her into a rest 
that, in this collapse of all that had been ordered in her 
life, had not begun. Before, her life had been ordered: 
her work, at home and at the Bijou, her passages with 
her mother, her quarrels with Phil, her memory of Herb, 
and too often the fear, to which she had become rec¬ 
onciled. Already much of what she had feared had be¬ 
come real. She had the substance now, not the fore¬ 
shadowing. But she had become so deeply used to 
shadows. 

She was not going to be at home, now, in her own 
life. That was all she felt, and was what, in thick, slow 
movements, she thought. Yet as the thin, wasted hours 
of the night passed it was almost as if she had lost order 
in the forms of life around her to find it within herself; 
and there it was moving into a music, and becoming a 
quiet of its own. White music, dim music, torn from con¬ 
fusion and growing within her: quiet of stars above the 
wind and the answer of restless trees; though all was 
magically stilled. 

Was this conversion? No. Christ had gone out in 
the night. This, she had found herself. 

[154] 


7 

When she awakened at last to the gray wash of light 
in her room, she saw by the slim banks against the win¬ 
dows that it had been snowing. Downstairs a stir be¬ 
gan which seemed, by a mutual consent, to leave her out. 
There followed two or three uninterrupted hours, dur¬ 
ing which her father and brother departed, and only the 
lonely clatter of her mother reached her ears. When she 
went down, carrying her clothes with her to dress by 
the kitchen fire, she was surprised to find that the wash 
water was not on. 

“Aren’t you going to wash today, ma?” she asked, 
knowing that her words were the first of long hours of 
words. Her mother did not answer. “It seems to me 
we’d better. It just means we have to tomorrow if we 
don’t.” 

Mrs. Gelston continued to gather dishes, grimly. 

“I don’t see that you need to be so . . .” Arlie’s 
voice lapsed into herself. 

“So what?” her mother jerked out. 

“Nothing. I guess you got a right to do anything 
you want.” 

Mrs. Gelston sniffed, and then came silence; but at 
last: “Now listen to me, Arlie. You wouldn’t say a 
word last night, but is Herb Shuman the father of that 
baby ?” 

“You know he is, ma.” Quietly. “I never went with 
anybody else.” 

“Is he still in California?” 

“Yes.” 

“Did he ever talk about marrying you?” 

“Only when I made him.” 

“Ain’t he going to?” 

“I don’t know. Not unless he wants to, I guess.” 

“Not unless he wants to. Huh, we’ll see about 

that.” 

[ 155 ] 


“But I wouldn’t let him unless he wanted to. I come 
too far, ma.” 

Mrs. Gelston sat down, a look of vague pain stiffening 
her face. “Your pa’s going to have something to say 
about that.” 

Then quickly: “Have you told pa yet?” 

“I didn’t dare to. He’d—he’d just go crazy. You 
don’t know your pa.” 

Didn’t she? As Arlie pondered, Mrs. Gelston dropped 
her head in her arms on the kitchen table, to sob softly, 
then wildly. Arlie went to her side and stood there 
helplessly. “Don’t cry, ma. I’m sorry. I can’t help it 
now, you know.” Her mother’s outflung arm swept her 
back. The sobbing stopped. 

“I know you can’t, I know you can’t, little bitch that 
you are. Giving yourself to every—oh, you fool! You 
fool! To have a daughter who’d—who’d do what you 
done!” 

Arlie moved to the window, where unseeingly she 
looked on the hard width of white. “I’m not a bitch, 
ma,” she said when her mother’s renewed sobs had died 
away. “I’m Arlie Gelston, and not anything else. 
Maybe I have done wrong. I know I have, but—” Her 
meaning seemed to fly out the window, to be received into 
the hard identity of the winter. How could she tell her 
mother of what she had heard within herself in the 
night ? 

“Yes, you’re Arlie Gelston, you are. Stand there fat 
as a hog, will you? ... I musta been blind not to see it 
long ago.” 

“No, I just didn’t put my corset on this morning. 
That’s all.” 

“I’d like to turn you out. And I don’t know but what 
your pa will when I tell him.” 

“Oh no you won’t. You couldn’t have me to hell 
around if you did.” 

[156] 


Mrs. Gelston began afresh with her invective, which 
passed over Arlie because it was too blunt to find her. 
During a lull Arlie telephoned to Somers that she was 
sick, couldn’t work, and might not be able to return at 
all. 

A little before eleven Mrs. Gelston sent her upstairs to 
her room, for they had seen Mrs. Ho rack floundering 
through the snow to the house. “Now what takes her 
out on a morning like this?’’ Mrs. Gelston had won¬ 
dered, and then, understanding: “She’s just the first 
of a string of ’em.” 

Since it was too cold in the upstairs room to stay out 
of bed Arlie tucked herself between the blankets and 
listened. With guttural greetings and a heavy stamping 
of feet Mrs. Horack came in. She had just come to get 
a yeast cake, Arlie heard her explain, since the snow had 
stopped the delivery wagon. But, shortly, Arlie could 
make out that the talk was of the revival, of herself, and 
with elaborate casualness, of the Shumans, of Herb. 
She blessed her mother for being volubly discreet. 

In the following days Arlie was often in her own 
room, for Mrs. Horack was only -the first of several, 
all with one pretext or another, and each seemingly un¬ 
aware of the visits of others. But Arlie and her mother 
could not be unaware of the total nor of its meaning, 
nor of the zeal with which Mrs. Holcomb had continued 
her work. 

Because Mrs. Gelston had to bear the ordeal alone, 
and could force no part of it on Arlie, there developed, 
under the clouds of recriminations, a feeble sense of 
community. The neighbors were descending, not on 
Arlie but on the Gelston family. 

The long hours which Arlie had to herself, alone in the 
daytime without work, gave her time to review and fore¬ 
see, and sometimes distantly to hear a strain of nocturnal 
music, vanishing before she could really listen, as a half 

[157] 


familiar name that dives into the depth of memory. 

In the long months behind her she had given way too 
often before each little spasm of the will, before each 
flicker of its even current, to find all her plans eddying 
into despair. Now, if such a moment came, steadying 
herself she tried to look on the worst possible hours and 
preserve her calm. As she succeeded she found that the 
effort did not need to be made so often; her control was 
extending over the most unpleasant hours of housework, 
and even over those moments when it seemed that if her 
mother directed one more gibe at her form or clumsiness 
she must fly at her with sharp hands to tear her loose 
cheeks from the bones. 

But at the end of the week she felt that she understood 
her mother for the first time; she could not put her under¬ 
standing into terms, but it was there. First she wondered 
why her mother insisted on her corset and middies, and 
then why she did not tell her father. It might have 
been, but was not, tenderness. Rather it was a withhold¬ 
ing from her husband of information that gave her a be¬ 
nighted sense of superiority. It was so helpless a way 
in which to be superior. 

Then one morning she knew by her father’s silence 
at breakfast, and by his sullen, frequent looks at her, 
that he had been told. His only comment had come 
when she bent over to pick up a knife. He slapped her 
resoundingly on ear and cheek. She looked up in a 
surprise of pain. “Hurry up, you clumsy fool,” he had 
said. She left the room. But that night when Phil, 
who had heard of her on the streets, attempted to toss 
insults across the supper table, her father had quieted 
him sharply. Thereafter he never spoke of the matter 
in her hearing, though her mother told her that nightly 
he threatened to “get” Herb when he returned from 
California. At first Arlie was disturbed, but as she 
watched her father she realized that his general in- 

■ [158] 


effectiveness would permit no action, even though Herb 
were in Coon Falls. He would sulk, he would talk— 
largely—but he would not act. 

She did not greatly care: she did not want him to act, 
but she had wanted to find him capable of action. The 
disappointment was only one more thing to be placed, 
one more thing to be dominated by the vigor that in¬ 
creased in her with every day of dwindling winter and 
the opening of spring. A vigor that freshened and at 
the same time matured her, forcing on her a strength 
she did not need, and that in its restraint became content¬ 
ment, marred only by an occasional dread of the pain 
of birth. Because her mother insisted she wrote twice to 
Herb, but received no answers; and watched her mother’s 
consequent tumult with what was almost amusement. 
If Herb came, well and good; she did not, even at that, 
have a sense that he was utterly gone from her. If he 
did not come . . . the lulling strength of her body was 
a natural defence against doubts that might waste that 
strength. 

It seemed, indeed, that she grew with the strength of 
the year, and that time, long her enemy, was now her 
friend, announcing its allegiance in every fleck of green 
it touched into field and tree. The twigs were thickening 
with beads against the pale April sky; they budded 
through bronze to olive and through powdery yellow to 
the new green of spring, and were hastening to full leaf 
in early May, when her time was come. Even her mother 
seemed caught in the maternal uprush of the year, and 
told old tales of abortions, monstrosities, and dry births. 

In the evenings Arlie would slip out for a walk along 
deserted roads, and the cool breath of the spring wind— 
for the wind in spring, for all its balm, has a cold heart 
—would send her back shivering from the pale light of 
naked stars to her changeless room, which more than 
ever was her own. 

[159] 


CHAPTER XI 


THE OLD WIVES’ TALE 
I 

Through the latter part of April Arlie worked on some 
baby clothes, using remnants and purchasing a few 
pieces from a mail order house; for, although everything 
was known now, neither Arlie nor her mother cared to 
shop at the local stores for the articles required. She 
sewed listlessly, tired with the long hours of housework 
from which her mother insisted there should be no 
release—it was no more than right that she suffer. Oc¬ 
casionally hours came when the birth itself overshadowed 
everything, and Mrs. Gelston talked with the inveterate 
sagacity of women who have borne children to those 
who are about to bear them. Arlie learned much, but 
less and less did she fear. Suspense alone upheld her, 
and a rooted need for climax. She would hear only 
distant unmeaning words as her mother predicted un¬ 
usual horrors for her—because of her size, her form, 
her sins, or her refusal to write another letter to “that 
Shuman.” 

As they lived through the days nearer to May, Mrs. 
Gelston became difficult in a new fashion. She was 
not going to have a doctor. The three male doctors of 
the town, she held, were worthless—old Dr. Symes, 
young Dr. Kramer, and the nondescript Brewster. The 
only other doctor was a woman. “Josephine W. Taylor, 

[160] 


M.D ” read her card in the professional directory of 
the Coon Falls Herald; it was said that she was a 
graduate of the University of Minnesota, and had 
practiced in some Minnesota town before coming to 
Coon Falls. When Arlie had suggested her, Mrs. Gel- 
ston had grown indignant. “Besides,” she ended, “we 
ain t got no money for bringing such kids into the house.” 

“I don’t ask you to pay, ma. I got nearly a hundred 
dollars saved, and you know it. I’ll pay for my own 
doctor.” 

Mrs. Gelston had thereupon talked the harder, intimat¬ 
ing that the money should have been paid for board and 
room, long before. But Arlie had the money well hidden. 
When the time came she would pay it out, she decided, 
to the doctor she wanted, and she wanted Dr. Taylor. 
It was not that she desired a woman; in fact, she had 
had enough of women, but she had come alone so much 
of the way that she darkly rebelled, not knowing why, 
against corrupting that harsh adventure with more 
familiarity than she could prevent. Symes, Kramer, 
Brewster, she had seen again and again. To have one 
of them would be to have Coon Falls. 

But even on the morning of the third of May her 
mother had not given in, and that night about ten o’clock 
labor began. At first she was not sure of the pains; they 
might be only another internal disturbance, she thought, 
akin to the raw dry burning she had suffered before. 
Because she was not sure, she waited, and during the 
following hour the fears of the first weeks, the dread, the 
hopes, the frustrations of the later ones, pressed upon her 
bending will. When the second series of pains came she 
was in doubt no longer, and with the vanishing of doubt 
all fear went, too: her time had come, the climax of the 
twisted months. 

In a few hours her child would be lying in her arms, 
or by her side, demanding a love which, she realized 

[161] 


suddenly, she was not prepared to give. They would be 
separate persons then. Only a cruel and unjust bond 
would hold them together, the child demanding, demand¬ 
ing, and she alone in the world, compelled—by what?— 
to care for it. Innocently, helplessly, flagrantly it would 
be the growing symbol of her disgrace, which wouldn’t 
be a disgrace at all if it weren’t for Mrs. Nolte, Mrs. 
Holcomb, Mrs ... all Coon Falls, all Iowa. . . . And 
this would be, too, the close of her life. She had been 
spurned, of late, in her own home, but in her own home 
she had been important. Her father had been gentle, 
Phil had been silent, even her mother had been impressed 
before the imminent flourish of pain. 

But when the second pain faded to fatigue she began 
to feel again her own significance and was about to call 
her mother, when she thought better of it. First labors, 
she knew, were long ones, continuing often from twelve 
hours up to two days. No—she preferred to rest in bed, 
or to rock by the open window, through which the night 
breathed, thick, cool, murmurous. 

The lights of the town shone brilliantly, and cars were 
passing. After a time the cars ceased; one by one the 
yellow windows filled with black. Through the wide, 
still, gray business of the night she rocked her way, 
gently, toward dawn. When the dark was stillest, time 
was told by the increasing frequency of the pains, which 
twisted her and caused her to grip whatever was at hand, 
to become an intenser point of silence in the night. 
Twice she napped, waking the second time to find a haze 
of light along the eastern sky. A solitary automobile 
passed with lights burning, but even as it passed the 
driver turned them out. The dull massive horizon was 
bordered with rose and gold, and the burning rondure of 
the sun ascended, flooding the town with clarity. 

Because she had not witnessed full dawn recently it 
seemed to her an incredibly long time before the family 

[162] 


began to stir. Cars, wagons, buggies were passing now 
and then. 

She waited. 

A few minutes after seven her mother came to the 
door, brushing her hair. “Why ain’t you got breakfast 
started?” she asked, seeing Arlie at the window. “You 
know as well’s I do you got to earn your keep. Your 
pa’s going to be late again.” 

“Once won’t matter,” Arlie answered. “I can’t get 
breakfast this morning.” She sought the bed, another 
pain was sending its premonitory thrills along her back. 
“Can’t you see, ma? I’m sick.” Her face twisted to 
unloveliness, and her eyes had their light withdrawn 
until not even pleading was in them. 

“Sick!” Mrs. Gelston advanced, and as she came was 
unable to restrain a smile that came wildly, in its own 
energy, and her eyes were alight with climax and in¬ 
trusive interest. For the time she lived only within the 
concern of birth. Not since she had tried to draw from 
Arlie all intimate detail of her hour with Herb—time and 
place, approach and aftermath—had she lived so en¬ 
tirely within the self-interest of life. Her smile grew 
broader, flaunting her participation; and then: “Why 
Arlie, when did it begin?” 

“Last night, when I come to bed. About ten it musta 
been.” 

Mrs. Gelston sat down. “Well—well my God! And 
you been at it all night. . . . Does it hurt much yet?” 

“Hurt’s enough.” 

“Want something to eat? . . . Maybe you’d better not 
though.” 

“I’m hungry all right. I suppose you know best, ma. 
You been here before.” 

Mrs. Gelston thought for a long time. There had been 
other years: “They let me eat,” she said at last. “I’ll 
get you something.” The smile broke again wildly, and 

[163] 


Arlie tried to answer and include herself in this new and 
brief community by drawing her own lips to a smile, but 
pain slowly curved the attempt into a grimace. Mrs. 
Gelston put a supporting arm around her daughter, and 
Arlie looked at her from quickly distant eyes. 

“I’m not laughing at you, Arlie. I don’t know what. 
. . . Is it going?” 

Arlie nodded and sat down. When she had breathed 
quietly a few times she spoke. “I guess it’s time to get 
a doctor now. I want Dr. Taylor. I wish you’d ’phone 
her.” 

Her mother’s face set into a more familiar mold at this 
mention of something outside that in which she had been 
wholly living. 

“Oh, so you want Dr. Taylor, do you? I suppose a 
man ain’t good enough for you!” 

“But I got to have a doctor. You know that as well 
as I do.” 

“Do I ?” 

“Of course you do. And I want—oh, get her please! 
I want her.” 

“Sure you do. You’re modest, you are. You got to 
have a woman. You nice, modest, little—” 

“It don’t make no difference what you call me, ma. I 
am what I am, I guess, and—” 

“Listen,” Mrs. Gelston mocked. “Listen to her talk, 
will you?” 

“Ma, you’re going to ’phone Dr. Taylor or /’m going 
to.” 

“Huh, maybe I won’t let you.” 

“Then I’ll walk to her office.” 

Mrs. Gelston left the room and did not return until 
after breakfast. Arlie fretted but knew there was time; 
besides, she didn’t want to go down while her father and 
brother were there. From the window she saw Phil slink 
away, and then her father. She thought that she ought 

[ 164] 


to feel sorry for both, but was glad, even in this way, to 
hit Phil’s pride. Yet her father’s slouch, and his weari¬ 
ness, disturbed her for a pale moment. She herself was 
making him older. Then her concern for him gave be¬ 
fore the pressure of her own struggle. 

When Mrs. Gelston did return Arlie took the offensive. 
“Ma, I want you to go right back and ’phone Dr. Taylor. 
I want her and I’m going to have her. And when you 
come back bring me some breakfast. I’m hungry, I 
been up all night.” 

“I see myself waiting on you. Get your own break¬ 
fast.” 

Arlie leaned for support against the bed. The breeze 
from the open window swayed her nightgown, over the 
back of which fell a single dark braid of hair, drawn from 
her high forehead. As she answered, the words seemed 
to absorb the energy which had kept her, for the moment, 
steadily erect; she wavered. “All right, I’ll get my own 
breakfast. But you get the doctor. I won’t have you 
touch me.” 

Before her daughter’s slow, painful, intense advance, 
Mrs. Gelston backed away: “My God, that I should 
come to this . . . calling a doctor for a ... I won’t say 
it . . . from my own daughter.” Sobs began. “It’s the 
first time it ever happened in my family!” 

“Oh, well,”—Arlie was moving from the chair and 
along the wall to the door—“blame it on pa’s family.” 

Mrs. Gelston went down the stairs to the telephone, 
with Arlie following at a slow distance, interrupting her 
advance several times for rest and steadiness. She ar¬ 
rived at the dining-room only in time to hear the last 
of the conversation: “Yes . . . kitty-corner from the 
Horacks’ and down the block, a yellow one by itself. . . . 
No, I don’t know. ... I don’t know. Good-bye.” 

“What don’t you know?” Arlie inquired, sinking into 
a chair. 


“None of your business,” her mother answered sul¬ 
lenly. '“What you doing down here?” 

“You said you wouldn’t get me no breakfast.” 

“You get back. I don’t want that doctor to find you 
here.” 

Arlie began the return, and it seemed to her that she 
had hardly reached the bed before she heard an automobile 
stopping, and then a slow, ponderous progress across the 
porch. The door-bell rang decisively, and she heard her 
mother hesitating in the hallway before the door opened. 

“Good morning, I am Dr. Taylor.” The tones filled 
the words of the greeting to their brims, and each word 
fell distinctly separate from its fellows. 

“Yes . . . just upstairs, Doctor. I was just getting 
some breakfast for Arlie. She didn’t feel well this morn¬ 
ing and wanted me to call you ... I don’t know what’s 
the matter. . . . She wouldn’t tell me. . . . She’s sort 
of . . . you know. You go on up and see her.” 

For answer came a deliberate ascent of the stairs, and 
as the footsteps came nearer a puffing was audible. Then 
the doorway was filled with a black skirt and white 
blouse, and rising above it a corpulent but handsome face 
—small curved nose, small perfect lips, and large eyes of 
pale hazel that rolled as slowly and comprehensively as 
the doctor walked. The medicine case was almost lost 
behind the skirt. 

“Well, so you are the sick girl, are you?” The doctor, 
with a glance at the old brown dresser, drew a chair to the 
bed and subsided. 

Another pain was on its way—it would not be so hard 
to bear now. Arlie wanted to speak before it came, to 
say—so much—but could utter only unintelligible 
sounds before she had to clench her teeth and twist to 
withhold the cry that was forcing its way up instead. 
The doctor’s face sobered; she leaned forward, and Arlie 
tried to look desperately into her an understanding of 

[166] 


the whole situation. The pain faded, and she relaxed. 

“Hmmm,” breathed Dr. Taylor. “Your mother told 
me she didn’t know what was wrong with you. I think 
you have a very unobserving mother. How long,”— 
she reached a hand for Arlie’s wrist—“how long have 
these pains been coming?” 

“Last night—about ten.” 

The doctor’s eyebrows arched and dropped. “How is 
it,” she asked, as she rose to continue her examination, 
“that your mother doesn’t know?” 

“She does. She’s lying. She just don’t want to let 
on. You see . . .” Arlie hesitated. 

“Yes, all right. I think I see all I need to, except about 
yourself. Turn on your back.” 

2 

“Now,” she said, when she had completed her ex¬ 
amination, “I’m going to ask you some questions that I 
don’t want you to answer unless you feel like it. First, 
though, let me tell you that you are in per-fect condition. 
It’s all going to go beautifully. Now . . .” Her arm—■ 
sleekness over brawn that had lifted Arlie a moment be¬ 
fore like a doll—reached out to take Arlie’s hand. The 
tan of it was uniform. “Grip—harder,” she said. 

“That helped,” Arlie whispered. 

“Now,” Dr. Taylor resumed, “I take it that your 
mother doesn’t care very much—to become a grand¬ 
mother ?” 

“No. ... You see, I’m not married, so the baby won’t 
have no father—not that way, I mean.” Dr. Taylor’s 
eyes seemed to grow a shade lighter. “But I have some 
money saved,” Arlie hurried. “I’ll pay you myself. . . .” 
She stopped, watching the doctor’s face. 

“Um-hmm. You have as much as twenty-five dollars 
saved, do you?” 

[167] 


“Oh well! I have almost a hundred/’ 

“You have? That’s fine. But . . . your mother 
really knows all about this, you say ?” 

Arlie nodded again. 

“I thought so,” the doctor said, half to herself, meas¬ 
uring the words as if they were medicines. “I think,” 
and she got on her feet, “that I’ll talk to your mother a 
little. She should have brought you some breakfast. 
Maybe I can hurry it.” As she left the room Arlie felt 
both desolate and comforted. 

She could hear them talking down stairs, and then, 
after a time, the doctor’s ascent. She entered with a tray 
—toast, boiled eggs, and cofifee, which she fed to Arlie. 

“Now,” she said, “I’m going to leave you for a while. 
You’re coming finely, and I want you to keep it up. 
Only, while I’m gone, don’t force anything, just go along 
with the pain, not any farther. Understand? I’ve told 
your mother what to do. She’ll do it. I’ll be back pres¬ 
ently.” 

Mrs. Gelston walked in, weeping. “Doctor, nothing 
like this ever happened in my family before. It’s awful. 
Why, I never suspected. . . . You dirty little puppy.” 
Her face puckered as she bent over Arlie. “I’d like to 
whale you!” She shook her face down at Arlie’s. 

Dr. Taylor’s arm brushed Mrs. Gelston back, and she 
retreated farther. “It was that Shuman, I know it was,” 
she whimpered. “Wasn’t it, Arlie?” she appealed, as if 
the point had been contested. For the moment Arlie 
could not answer; then: “You know it was, ma. Why 
pretend you don’t know a thing about it? You’ve known 
three or four months now.” 

“Why, no such thing, you little liar. I never knew till 
five minutes ago that you’d—” 

Dr. Taylor had turned to look at her. She stopped, 
confused. “Honest, Doctor, she lies like that. Why . . .” 
Her words trailed out and she sought the window. 

[168] 


“Not too much talking, Mrs. Gelston,” the doctor was 
saying. 


3 

The doctor had gone and come and gone again, promis¬ 
ing to return at once. In the meantime Mrs. Gelston ex¬ 
amined the changes that had been made with such surpris¬ 
ing deftness: the bed with its rubber sheet and padding, * 
the washbowl with dull red rubber gloves afloat in the 
blue solution of bichloride, the cleared dresser, ranged 
with antiseptic packages. Contempt lined her face as she 
poked among them, but she said very little, and when 
Arlie spoke went to give her what help she could. 

“Is she coming, ma? Look and see.” 

Mrs. Gelston lifted the faded scrim curtain. “Of 
course she ain’t. She won’t be here for a couple of 
hours yet. You ain’t anywhere near the second stage. 
They never aim to come till then.” She settled herself 
in the rocker near the window. “What you tell her I 
lied for? Ain’t it enough for you to bring all this on us 
without calling your mother a liar? What if I do try to 
ease up a little on it? Shame on you.” 

Arlie submitted again to the quickening rhythm of 
her body, but did not ask for help. Her mother watched 
with interest. “Yes,” she said, “you can bear it now and 
not say a word, but just wait—you’ll yell, you’ll yell 
bloody murder.” 

Arlie lay back once more. “Don’t . . . I’ll scream if 
you want. Stop talking.” 

“Yeh, stop talking—with your father and Phil too 
’shamed to come home for dinner. It’s nearly two now, 
and they won’t come after this. And I hope that doc- 
ter don’t neither. I’d just like to look at you yeh. 
Scream, you little fool, scream! It 11 help you. Let 
it out, I say!” She bent over the bed again, her face 
pressing her desire close to Arlie’s, that was flushed 

[169] 


and hard as the bone beneath. “Yeh,” she leaned closer, 
baring her small white teeth. 

“Why,”—on a rough indrawal of breath—“do you 
want me to scream? I will, though, I will.” The sobs 
thickened and then ebbed within control. “I won’t!” 
she flung. “Get out, or I’ll . . Mrs. Gelston backed 
to the window, and then, without looking out, was back 
at the bed, half sitting there, half kneeling, and putting 
her hand out to Arlie’s brow. “There, Arlie. I—I 
don’t know what . . . it’s been too much for me, I 
guess. I’ll be good to you. Only you been a bad girl 
and I . . . there, there. . . . Do you want me to hold 
your hand?” She was weeping so fully and abandonedly 
she could not find the hand that her own was seeking. 

Time passed, until, even in her absorption in the 
torturous weaving, Arlie heard the automobile outside, 
Her mother was stroking her forehead. 

Dr. Taylor had returned to stay to the end this time, 
she informed them as she crossed the room. 

“Doctor,” Arlie reached out a hand. “I’m so glad 
you come.” Her mother watched the doctor with eyes 
that sought offence. 

“Mrs. Gelston,” the doctor turned, “I wish you’d go 
down to put some more water on to boil.” Mrs. Gel¬ 
ston left. 

“How much longer, Doctor?” Arlie asked, half an 
hour later. She was beginning to feel the extent of 
time, that had stretched in a pale wavering length from 
yesterday morning until the present. It was like her 
heart, going on ceaselessly; only one didn’t realize it, 
because one slept, usually. 

“Not very long, now. Two hours, maybe. You’re 
close to the second stage.” 

“Where’d you go?” Arlie managed to ask later. 

“Out in the country a ways. Don’t talk now.” 

Time began to blur, and to confuse itself with other 

[170] 


days, hours beneath the starlit trees, but with an ec¬ 
stasy of torture alive in her; and then the room would 
clear and she would see the doctor with her rolled-up 
sleeves and rubber gloves soaking her hands in the wash¬ 
bowl, raising them to let the blue drops fall, and she 
would be holding her mother’s hands and pulling, and as 
she pulled would be going somewhere, going through a 
struggle of elements, fighting Grendel in a blue gloom, 
blue as the drip from the dull red gloves, and winning 
her way, inch by inch. As she bore down, her whole 
body quivered with a savage delight of pain, as if she 
were worsting all the forces that had beset her. 

Like a new pain a bell rang, and her mother was talk¬ 
ing, then leaving. “Bring him up,” the doctor was say¬ 
ing. “This is the place for him . . . but bring him.” 

Whom were they bringing? “Keep them out,” she 
moaned. “Don’t let . . . in. They hate me.” 

“There . . . just pull harder. Work now—all you 
can. It won’t be long.” 

Phil—was it Phil, standing by the doctor, his hat in 
his hand, his face toward her, pale and thin-lipped? 

“No, you see about that water, Mrs. Gelston. . . . Go 
on, Mr. Shuman, there’s a moment now. But say quick 
whatever you’re going to say.” 

Herb ? 

He had taken her hands. “Arlie—I—” 

“Herb, don’t look at me, now.” 

“I won’t, Arlie. I just want to tell you I’m on my 
way to Douglas, to the court house. A license, you 
know. I’ll be back, as fast as God’ll let me, I’ll be back 
. . . I didn’t know. . . .” He faded out, and she was 
gripped again, and when she opened her eyes the door 

was closed. 

“Was that Herb?” 

“It was.” 

“But he’s in California.” 

[i7i] 


“He was, but just now he’s in Iowa.” 

He had said he was going somewhere. She ought to 
know, he had told her, but she couldn’t remember. It 
was all blurring again and falling into darkness. Did 
she have to go through another night and the long com¬ 
ing of dawn? 

“What time was Herb here?” she asked, when the doc¬ 
tor turned on the light. 

“About four-thirty. He had a blow-out or he’d have 
been here sooner.” 

“Is it raining?” 

“It’s been raining ever since he left. You must not 
talk. You can’t work when you do, and the harder you 
work now the sooner you’ll be through.” 

5 

At times she could hear the drizzle and hiss of rain, 
and the fresh gurgle of water in the spouts. In the lulls 
in her struggle she recognized the doctor’s face, with its 
remarkably small features, as intently closer. 

“Hurry,” the doctor called to some one. And her fin¬ 
gers quickened until she produced a white hood of gauze 
that descended over Arlie’s nose and mouth, penetrating 
and sickening her into insecurity, and she was sinking to 
a warm depth, then into aisles of corn up which she 
forced herself—on and on into the thickness, past stalk 
and stalk rising green and slender, infinitely repeated, and 
she herself was the black earth straining beneath. Some¬ 
where a relief. She was sinking back from a height 
achieved. In the darkness that was suddenly radiant 
with yellow wires dimming and going out, a raucous cry. 

“What is it?” she wanted to ask, but was overwhelmed 
in the corn tossing into waves on whose crest she rode 
and rode until they whitened and let her fall, gently and 
with imperceptible ease, into her own bed. 

[172] 


"It’s a boy”—the doctor’s voice. “A sod-buster!” 

It took her a moment to realize that this was the end 
of what she had been through. At first the child had 
no relation to her struggle. She' had been laboring with 
pain, for no result. 


6 

Presently the bed had been changed and was magically 
clean, and Arlie, bandaged and in a fresh nightgown, 
looked about. Yes, it was over. 

But her mother was fidgeting. “I wonder where that 
Shuman is. He shoulda been back long ago. I bet he’s 
just run off again.” 

“It is late,” the doctor said, looking at her watch. 
“Ten-thirty. Let’s see, the baby was born at nine. Al¬ 
most twenty-four hours of it, Arlie.” She smiled as she 
folded a cloth. 

Then it all came back, turned up from layers of time 
long hidden by others: Herb in the room, bending over 
her, and going, at four-thirty—going, yes, for a marriage 
license. 

“Yes sir, he’s just cut out again,” Mrs. Gelston re¬ 
iterated. 

“You wait,” the doctor said, “I rather believe in that 
boy, after all.” 

“Well, I don’t. He’s the scum of the earth.” 

Arlie was too dazed to ask more or to argue. Serenity 
was bathing her, and she did not care, except for the 
cool silvery twilight through which she was falling to the 
dark comfort below. 


She woke to the sound of voices, people in the room— 
men, her father, a bald some one with a fringe of red- 

[173] 


gray hair and a nose. But she looked up into Herb’s 
face. 

“I’m back, Arlie. Did you think I wasn’t coming?” 

“I didn’t think, Herb, not at all.” 

“You see, I broke down—the car did; and then I ran 
out of gas—a mile out of Douglas. I had to run, and 
then hunt an hour to get a car to come back on. But I 
got here. ... I hope you won’t mind my marrying you 
in a muddy suit, Arlie?” 

“You want to marry me, Herb?” 

The people across the room had ceased talking, invol¬ 
untarily listening, but the doctor’s voice boomed in, a 
screen of loudness behind which their own near tones 
would be unheard. 

“I don’t want nothing else but to marry you, Arlie, if 
you’ll have me after the way I treated you. I been in 
hell ever since I come back.” 

“Of course I want you to, but not just because I have 
a baby now. . . .” 

“My God, Arlie, listen—when I was here this after¬ 
noon, I—your face was like a fist, it was. I never saw 
such a face.” 

“Don’t remember.” 

“I’ll remember the face you got now, then. And I 
love you, kid, I love you.” He had her hand and was 
pressing it.” 

“And I do you, Herb.” 

He had turned away but her hand would not let him 
leave. He was beckoning to some one, to Reverend 
Pingrey, who came to the bedside. 

“Well, Arlie ... I’m glad it’s turning out this way. 
You can be a—I know you can make yourself a good 
wife. You’ll have the Lord helping you, Arlie. He 
won’t desert you.” 

“Come on,” Herb interrupted. “Let’s begin.” 

With the first words of the marriage service she felt 

[1741 



that she was going to drift down and away from all of 
them. Little was clear, and that little was expanding 
into fundamental dizziness. They were drawing from 
her words she did not want to give. Even Herb was 
urging her to say them. She was being married. Far 
above her impotence, like gods, they were performing 
in the bluish gloom a ritual that would do to her—she 
did not know what. It was not fair. As in a nightmare 
she could only struggle, with infinite ineffectuality, 
against them and what they were making her say. Her 
words were separate from her, sounds detached from any 
personal source, hostile murmurs. “I pronounce you 
man and wife/’ Herb’s lips were on hers, hot and close. 
He had no reason to cry, and she had not the strength. 

“You’re my wife now, Arlie.” 

She was solid on the bed again, and all was clear— 
Herb, the doctor’s face across the room, and her father 
was coming up. Herb gave place to him. 

“Hello, pa,” she said. Had he been there all the time? 

“Hello, Mrs. Shuman,” he replied. “I’m pleased to 
meet you. . . . Congratulations, Arlie.” And then, in an 
awkward swoop, he kissed her forehead. Her mother 
was talking in the corner, and Herb was talking to the 
doctor, who turned from him to clear the room. 

When all had left but Herb the doctor came to the bed¬ 
side. 

“Well,” she began, “it’s been . . . but . . . why, you 
haven’t seen the baby yet.” She placed a huddle of 
blankets by Arlie’s side. 

“It’s a boy, Arlie,” Herb said. 

“Don’t you suppose I know that?” He needn’t have 
spoken so exasperatingly. She looked at the dark wet 
little head, and the vague knot of its features. 

“He’s all right, is he?” she asked. 

“Fine as silk,” the doctor answered. “Seven pounds 

and an ounce.” 

[175] 


Herb bent over to look more closely, and at his puzzled 
expression Arlie sank back. “I ought to love him, I 
suppose,” she said, “but I don’t. He’s ... I don’t 
know.” She could find no words to express her lack of 
feeling for the alien little bundle at her side—hers and 
yet so utterly not hers. 

She turned to look at him again, but he was gone, and 
Herb was bending over to kiss her good-night. 

“We’ll have to find a name for it,” she said, and re¬ 
laxed into an exhaustion that could not reply by any sign 
whatever to the vague words, becoming vaguer and far¬ 
ther away, that he was saying above her. 


[176] 


PART TWO 



• ' 



CHAPTER XII 


BRIGHT VALLEY 
I 

Standing behind a closed upstairs window in the Shu¬ 
man farmhouse Arlie looked out. From a hazy union 
with the June sky the green of emerging corn grew 
separate down the black purity of field sloping to the 
red barn and silo. Behind these, and on each side, the 
infinitely-leaved and tremulous bright foliage of a grove 
caught into itself the green of lush surrounding grass¬ 
land. A day of green and blue and black. 

Her fingers stroked the cool linen of the housedress 
Mrs. Shuman had brought recently from Des Moines, but 
her thoughts were not on the dress nor on its compan¬ 
ions in the ample closet; she was content to be reas¬ 
sured again’, by the land itself, of that security of com¬ 
fort, drawn from the land, that for a month now had 
been bringing her almost to peace. At present she 
wanted the nearer presence of the land. She might go 
out to the hammock in the grove—but soon the baby 
would wake. Instead she opened the window on the 
faint wide roar of the summer day and pressed her fore¬ 
head against the screen. Mrs. Gardewine was nearing 
the house with a basket of peas and Arlie waved to her. 
“Isn’t it beautiful today!” 

“I ain’t got time to look at no day,” said Mrs. Garde- 
wine. “I got to hurry lunch.” 

[179] 


‘Til shell the peas for you if you’ll just wait,” Arlie 
called to her disappearing figure. “I got to nurse the 
baby now.” 


2 

A month of Bright Valley. She had come two weeks 
after the birth of the baby, as soon as Dr. Taylor had 
permitted. The days in the old house at Coon Falls had 
been, on the whole, happy days, because all that now 
was real, and in its reality a little disappointing, had 
then been foreseen as perfection. Herb had come every 
day, sometimes twice a day, and had staid for hours. On 
three occasions he had brought his mother. 

The first visit had not been easy. 

Arlie had imagined meeting her mother-in-law in the 
dining-room at Bright Valley, where she had lunched 
with Mr. Shuman. There sat all her fears. But on the 
second day after her marriage, when she had turned 
drowsily in the morning expecting to see the door¬ 
way framing Herb, she had found it containing, instead, 
his mother. After all, it had been easier so. 

Mrs. Shuman had advanced as if with courage, and 
prepared—after a day and a morning, Arlie learned 
later, that had not been easy—for a difficult task. Herb, 
hesitating at her shoulder, had been about to speak when 
his mother, sitting down by the bed, had taken Arlie’s 
hand in hef own. 

“Are you feeling better ?” she had finally asked. 

“Yes, I’m all right now; a little weak, maybe, but 
all right,” Arlie answered. 

“That’s good. I . . . it’s been hard for you, I know. 
Herbert, come here. I want to see you together. Sit 
down, on the edge of the bed. Gently , Herbert. 
Now ... no, go away. I don’t want to talk to you 
both. I thought I did.” 

When he had gone Mrs. Shuman remained silent, 

[180] 


clasping her hands in her lap. Arlie could see that con¬ 
trol was not easy for her, and that tears were gather¬ 
ing in her eyes. “Don’t, Mrs. Shuman.” Again she 
touched the hand at her side. “I know it’s hard for you, 
it is for me, too.” 

Mrs. Shuman ignored the hand. “But it’s all so hor¬ 
ribly real!” she protested. “Yesterday it was differ¬ 
ent . . . but now, that horrible dresser!” 

Arlie looked at the dresser that for so many years had 
been inoffensively familiar. It was brown and worn as 
ever, though a little neater and more official with its bot¬ 
tles and medical array. “The dresser?” she inquired. 

“Oh, it doesn’t matter. I don’t know . . her 
mother-in-law answered; and then, more directly: “You 
say you’re all right, do you?” 

“Yes, I’m all right, if only . . 

“Yes, only what?” 

“If only you’ll be, and give me a chance, you know.” 

“It’s not going to be easy for any of us, is it?” A 
sigh followed the question. 

“No, but—” 

“Can you keep house ?” Mrs. Shuman broke in. “Can 
you sew? Do you read much?” 

“I kept this house, practically. I ain’t—I haven’t had 
much time to read.” (Just why had she said that, she 
wondered. She had read magazine after magazine in the 
last months.) But Mrs. Shuman did not seem to have 
heard. She was walking about the room, pausing at 
the window. 

“If only it hadn’t been this way!” she said. 

“I know.” Arlie mingled humility and defiance in her 
tones. “I know well as you, I guess. But I only . . . 
ain’t been good with Herb, Mrs. Shuman. I only 
ain’t—” 

“Don’t talk about it! Don’t talk about it!” With 
that, Mrs. Shuman sat down by the bed again. “I wish,” 

[181] 


she said, bending nearer, “I wish I could . . . just take 
you in my arms, Arlie, and forget everything. I feel 
I ought to do it, but somehow I can’t. I know you’ve 
had an awful time of it, but I don’t feel the hardness 
of it for you yet. Just for myself and my own 
family. . . . But I’m going now. I don’t want to see 
the baby. He’s asleep anyway. I’ll see him next time. 
I know I shouldn’t disturb you, and I’m afraid I have. 
It’s too much for me today, that’s all. I’ll . . . I’ll come 
again.” 

Stiffly she had kissed Arlie on the forehead and had 
gone. When Herb returned he and Arlie were silent 
together. 

The next time Mrs. Shuman had held the baby for 
half an hour, discussing its clothes and care with Arlie 
and her mother, and all were drawn closer by this com¬ 
mon interest. On her last visit the talk was of Arlie’s 
wardrobe and of the various purchases to be made on 
Mrs. Shuman’s trip to Des Moines. 

After that, and for some time after her arrival at 
Bright Valley, Arlie had not tried to distinguish exactly 
what those around her were feeling or thinking; she was 
too much engrossed with her new mode of life. The 
farmhouse at Bright Valley had all the conveniences of 
a city home. Mrs. Shuman herself was from the city, 
Mr. Shuman would not give up the country, and his 
means permitted the compromise of a rural luxury and 
convenience hardly paralleled in twenty Iowa counties. 
There were many houses that were as large, and a few 
that possessed the conveniences, but life in the others 
went on for the most part as in the farmhouses of two 
decades before: the bathrooms were unused; the dining¬ 
room was a living-room and the back porch was the hired 
men’s clubhouse. Not so at Bright Valley. There the 
hired men not only had their own house, but lived in it; 
and the Shuman house, with all its conveniences, was in- 

[182] 


telligently used. From this home, Arlie gathered, Mrs* 
Shuman had been accustomed to descend upon Lawson, 
there to dominate as many of the women’s activities as 
she cared to; and every summer the clubwomen of Law- 
son, with their families, came to Bright Valley for a 
great picnic. The picnic was to be omitted this year. 

Knowledge of that omission, coming to her casually 
through Herb, reduced Arlie’s two daily showerbaths 
from gay watery adventures to mere routine as she tried 1 , 
for the first time at Bright Valley, to make out her own 
position. Mr. Shuman, she was sure, was not so much 
disturbed as was his wife. At the table he joked with 
her, inquiring after the baby’s gain for the day and speak* 
ing sagaciously, as one expert to another, on the varieties 
of stock food; then he would describe experiments with 
hogs and refer to the baby as “the little white pig” until 
his wife protested. 

What Mrs. Shuman was thinking in her long silences 
—at the table and in the living-room after dinner in the 
evenings—Arlie could not discover. Gradually her 
mother-in-law advanced toward intimacy, but always she 
protruded a certain angularity of emotion, composed of 
innumerable false starts and jerkings-back, that held them 
apart. 

Shortly, Mrs. Shuman had begun to call Arlie’s atten¬ 
tion to articles in the Outlook, which she herself read 
regularly, along with the Atlantic Monthly , Good House - 
keeping, and the Saturday Evening Post. Mr. Shu¬ 
man’s reading, Arlie noticed with interest, was Wallace's 
Farmer, the Des Moines Register, the Chicago Tribune, 
and an occasional article in the Atlantic Monthly which 
had been praised by his wife. Herb dabbled in all the 
magazines and had a remarkable memory for Ding’s car¬ 
toons, which he would frequently and laboriously re¬ 
create, in words, at the luncheon table. 

Mrs. Shuman would advance on Arlie indirectly* 

[183] 


'“Peter,” she would say to her husband, “did you read 
that essay by L. P. Jacks in the Atlantic?” Then, after a 
resume of the essay she would turn to gather Herb’s 
opinion; and from Herb she turned regularly to Arlie. 
At first Arlie could only murmur “I don’t know,” and 
search out the Atlantic afterwards. Later she would re¬ 
mark, “I thought it was fine,” whether she had read it 
or not. 

When she and Herb were alone Herb would growl with 
irritation, but Arlie carefully omitted herself from the 
criticism of his mother. “I don’t know, Herb,” she said 
once. “I don’t get things very well, maybe. Not like 
she does anyway. But it’s sort of interesting to hear 
her talk about them.” 

“Oh, of course mother’s well posted. You got to hand 
it to her on that. She knows lots more’n dad does about 
things. But she doesn’t need to pick at you that way 
all the time, especially about grammar.” 

“Yes, but I suppose it’s good for me,” she answered, 
and the talk shifted. 

There had come an evening when Arlie and Mrs. Shu¬ 
man were alone on the screened porch. “You know, Ar¬ 
lie,” Mrs. Shuman had suddenly said, “I think you have 
the making of a fine woman in you, and I want to help 
;you all I can. I know I can’t just touch you always. 
I’m too old, I guess.” She paused and they drew closer 
in the evening that was washing the sky with deepen¬ 
ing gray. Arlie tensed herself toward the older woman, 
wanting that breaking gesture of rapport they had not 
achieved. Blands rested on her arms, hands that would 
have drawn her close had they not held her where she 
was. “It’s—” Mrs. Shuman began. “No ... I can’t. 
Something’s out of me or we’d understand each other 
better. But I care for you, Arlie, now; and I want you 
to care for me.” 

[184] 


“Of course, I do . . . just a lot.” Arlie looked 
up, and a kiss was withheld between them. Arms 
around each other they walked across the porch toward 
the wider light without, and an uncomfortable sense was 
growing in them that the moment would come to 
withdraw their arms; if, indeed, that moment had not 
passed. 

“It’s just ... all that . . . that makes me want you 
to read a little more, to keep up your education, you 
know. . . . You didn’t read that article I spoke of, did 
you ?” 

“N—no. I haven’t really had the time since you men¬ 
tioned it.” 

“No, I suppose not.” Their arms relaxed and were 
withdrawn. Presently Mrs. Shuman inquired, “The 
baby’s asleep?” 

“Yes, but I wonder if I changed him? ... I guess 
I’ll see.” Escape, through the long living-room, darkly 
furnitured, through the hall and up the stairs. 

Thereafter Arlie was a little more self-conscious as 
she read, and could not feel at home in the contented si¬ 
lence of people reading in the evening. The 1 silence, like 
her mother-in-law, made its demands on her. 

Instead, she dreamed—of the baby, of vaguely colored 
future days, of Herb, and what he was to mean; of 
Herb as her “husband”—an unaccountable word of such 
ordinary meaning before, and of only partially fathomed 
and obscure significance at present. Because of the cir¬ 
cumstances of their marriage she had an unusual time 
in which to come to know him through the intimate con¬ 
tacts of daily life, but without finality. Their real mar¬ 
riage must come with the weeks. For the present they 
talked, ate together, and were inmates of the same house, 
with the common, peculiar interest of the baby. Some¬ 
times at night when the baby cried Herb would come in 

[185] 


from his adjoining room to offer his help; and occasionally 
he walked the floor with the baby, who was rocked and 
nursed in accordance with his own will rather than with 
the final convenience of his mother. 

When the baby had gone back to sleep, Arlie and Herb, 
wide awake by that time, would talk for half an hour, 
Arlie curled up in the bed and Herb blowing his ciga¬ 
rette smoke through the window. Because they were and 
were not husband and wife, a rare deliciousness clung to 
these nocturnal colloquies. It was during one of them 
that Arlie learned of Dr. Taylor’s visit to Bright Valley 
on the baby’s birthday. 

She had driven up by the side of the house, Herb had 
told her, to sit in her car honking the horn. Mrs. Gar- 
dewine, who went out, returned for Herb. 

“I am Dr. Taylor,” she had informed him, “of Coon 
Falls. In a very few hours I expect to deliver a child 
of yours. I regard the mother as a very fine girl. I 
think she will make you a good wife.” 

Herb stared at her. 

“Do you want me to drive you to the courthouse for 
a license,” she went on, “or do you have a car of your 
own ?” 

“I got one of my own,” he had answered, and there¬ 
upon she sent her roadster whirling around the drive, and 
heading it for the road had stopped again. “How soon,” 
she asked, “shall we expect you?” 

“Well, things just broke right then. That was the end 
of it for me. ‘About as quick as I can get there,’ I 
says. ‘I got to get some money first.’ That was all she 
wanted. Just snorted out of the yard in that roadster 
of hers, but I tell you she had a rope around my neck 
and the other end in her hand. So I hunted up dad and 
blurted the whole damn’ thing out to him and asked for 
some money. Somehow he wasn’t surprised. Just 
asked me if it was you. He remembered you, see? And 

[186] 


when I says yes he shelled out and—and you know the 
rest, I guess.” 

“Did your dad say anything about me?” Arlie had 
asked. 

“No, no more’n I said.” 

“Didn’t he do anything?” 

“No. . . . He looked sorta white around the gills was 
all. Oh, and he told mother when I didn’t get back for 
dinner. He—he made it a lot easier for me with her, I 
can tell you.” 

“But it took the doctor to make you come, didn’t it?” 

“Naw, you got it all wrong, Arlie. She just showed 
me how bad I wanted to come, really, down in my heart, 
I mean. Why, when I got started I was so happy the 
old car couldn’t go fast enough, and when I ran out of 
gas and didn’t know at first what was wrong my old 
heart just beat like a trip-hammer. I damn’ near cried, 
Arlie, I was so mad and miserable, and when I was 
finally going to your place with the minister and every¬ 
thing I was so damn’ happy I wanted to sing, only I 
didn’t because I was worried I wouldn’t get there before 
the baby did. Gee ... I wish I had.” 

“It doesn’t matter, Herb. Besides, I couldn’t of taken 
time out for that then.” 

“No, I suppose not.” They smiled, and in the dark¬ 
ness he bent over to kiss her. “I love you, kid. I did 
all the time. Maybe you think I had a good time in Cali¬ 
fornia. Hell, I wouldn’t give that trip to my worst 
enemy. I’m not one of these gay tom-cats, Arl. 
Maybe I didn’t write, but believe me, I never looked at 
anything pretty without I remembered you and what you 
said that Sunday. It was just that I didn’t know what 
to do, or how to do it, exactly. And the week we got 
back here I—the folks thought I was sick.” 

The frankness with which he had told her everything 
served as a warrant to Arlie for the truth of his defence. 

[187] 


She was not so sure of what he had to say about Cali¬ 
fornia. He reiterated that he had been “a yellow dog 
to go off that way”; but he had wanted a good time; he 
hadn’t been ready “to settle down”; he had “changed 
from a kid to a man since last fall.” Thereafter, when 
the topic reappeared, Arlie led the conversation afield, or 
assured him that she understood “perfectly.” Rather it 
was the fear that she would never be able to understand, 
except to Herb’s injury, that made her wary. She 
wanted peace now. 

Because of this need for peace she was dreading the 
arrival of Herb’s sister Gloria, due home in a few days 
after a visit at a Wisconsin lake with sorority friends. 

“Just what is she like?” she had asked Herb, expe¬ 
riencing, as she thought of Gloria, a flash of panic. 

“Don’t worry,” he had responded. “She’ll be all right. 
She’s a little stuck on herself now she’s in the U. Makes 
a hell of a rumpus about little things She just needs a 
little strong handling. Sit on her once or twice—hard. 
She’ll be good to you.” 


3 

On the June morning when Arlie told Mrs. Garde- 
wine that she would be down to shell the peas, she had 
just finished nursing the baby and was about to start for 
the kitchen when Herb came in. “Where you going?” 
lie asked, and when told, motioned her back. “Let that 
go. That’s what the old girl’s paid for. I want to talk 
to you a bit.” 

“Let’s go in your room then. We’ll wake the baby 
here.” 

When they had softly closed the door he sank into a 
chair and to Arlie’s “What is it?” for a long moment 
answered nothing. 

“We got to decide on something,” he said finally. “I’m 

[ 188] 


tired of hanging around here. I want a home of my 
own.” 

“Why, what’s the matter? I thought things were 
lovely.” 

“You don’t expect to stay here always, do you?” 

Had she been staying on sufferance, Herb’s as well as 
his parents’? And had she been alone? “I thought we 
were staying,” she said. 

“We, then. But I’m tired of all this going-on of 
mother’s. You’re good enough for me, I guess.” 

Confusion ran in her mind. “Do—do they say I’m 
not good enough for you, Herb? I was beginning to 
think I was. They’re kind to me, / think, considering.” 

“If mother would just stop picking at you. Dad’s all 
right.” 

“But she don’t—doesn’t pick. Not any more’n she 
ought to. I need to know a lot of things.” 

“Let her tell you herself, then. I’m not going to nag- 
you.” 

She was silent, surveying the background that with his 
last words had vertiginously deepened. There was more 
said that was not said to her than she had suspected— 
comment after comment on her shortcomings. The baby 
had not been all. She herself, properly married, would 
still have been unwelcome, because—she was what she 
was. She had not thought of that. Indeed she had felt 
that her complete acceptance was only a matter of time. 
What contentment she had was false. Personally, she 
would never be accepted, despite Mrs. Shuman’s efforts 
at affection. At least she wouldn’t be accepted till she 
was a different person, and when she was different—then 
would the baby begin to count against her more heavily 
than he did at present? 

So puzzling she could not respond suggestively to the 
other things Herb had been talking of for the last few 
minutes. 

[189] 



* . . “So the garage ought to be a good thing for me, 
though I don’t know that I want to live in Haley very 
much.” 

“Oh, that would be all right. Anywhere, Herb.” 

“The Ford agency is sure a winner, believe me; but I 
think I could do better with insurance and real estate and 
a little stock-buying right here in Lawson. I sorta know 
the ropes around here.” 

“Why not here, then?” Arlie asked. “We could get 
a nice little house, and it would be fun.” 

Herb glanced out the window. “But you see, there’s 
the kid. . . . We got to think of him, growing up and 
all.” It was the first time Herb had mentioned the baby’s 
future and their relation to it. She found herself look¬ 
ing down a vista palely but painfully like her months of 
pregnancy in Coon Falls. Concealment and evasion, de¬ 
fence and again defence against the inquisitiveness of 
the town and countryside. “But won’t people know even 
in Haley soon enough?” 

“Not till we get going anyway. Then it won’t matter 
so much. Time, you know.” 

Arlie did know, and smiled at what she knew, of time. 


The next Saturday when Mr. and Mrs. Shuman left 
for Lawson to meet the train that was bringing Gloria 
home, Arlie retired to her room. She remained there 
throughout the distant flurry of the home-coming. Herb 
had gone to Haley the day before to look over the garage, 
and Arlie dreaded to go down alone to face the owner 
of the voice that vibrated so resonantly below, so novel 
a note in the household. Then they came upstairs to 
Gloria’s room and Arlie could make out a part of their 
conversation: 

“I just couldn’t take that local, mother, when I could 
get the through train later. There was such a pleas- 

[190] 


ant bunch in the Pullman too. I was glad I waited. 
I met Fred Rickaby’s sister—Mabel, Helen,—I forget 
her name, but she’s at Illinois. We had a dandy talk. 
She’s just full of pep. . . . This? No! It’s a rag, but I 
thought it would do for today. It’s so awfully dusty 
sometimes.” With the closing of the door their talk was 
a murmur. 

Were they talking of her? 

Presently Mrs. Shuman went downstairs; then, after 
a longer time, Gloria. Arlie knew that she should go 
too, that dinner would soon be ready. She would have 
to go then—unless she pinched the baby to make him cry. 

Smoothing her dress, the best Mrs. Shuman had pur¬ 
chased, she looked in the mirror. The dress shone silkily 
and was a “perfect fit.” The new way of dressing her hair 
seemed becoming, too, drawn as it was to conceal the 
height of her forehead and to make her cheekbones a little 
less prominent. Her returning color was helping both 
her contour and her eyes. She wished, though, that her 
eyebrows were a little less bushy. 

Another look at the baby, who had his arms flung back 
to let his rosy hands curl by his ears, reassured her. He 
was responsibility and certification. Braced, she went 
down. 

Gloria sat by the library table, turning the pages of a 
magazine. She looked up critically at Arlie, who stood 
in the centre of the room, hesitant between an impulsive 
greeting and retreat. 

Gloria let the magazine slip to her lap and extended a 
rosily manicured hand. “I suppose you’re Arlie,” she 
said. 

“Yes, and you’re Gloria?” 

“Yes, I’m Gloria.” Gloria gazed at her altogether too 
steadily. As carelessly as possible Arlie picked up an 
Atlantic Monthly and yawned. 

“Oh, you read the Atlantic, do you?” 

[I9i] 


“Often, do you?” Arlie looked up, beginning to gather 
confidence. 

Gloria, caught at a disadvantage with her Saturday 
Evening Post, raised the magazine to continue her run¬ 
ning inspection of it. “Just when in May were you and 
Herb married?” Gloria asked. “Mother didn’t tell me 
the date ... or else I’ve forgotten it.” 

“May fourth.” 

“Rather sudden, wasn’t it?” 

Arlie winced. “That depends on how you look on it, 
I guess.” Each raised her magazine and Gloria recrossed 
her legs. 

“As far as that goes,” Gloria resumed, “I guess a good 
many things will depend on how they’re looked at.” 

“Will depend, or do?” 

“Both.” They turned their pages simultaneously. 
“Personally,” Gloria continued, “I think that Herb was 
too young to marry, but of course, if—” Fluttering 
pages finished the sentence. 

“Yes,” said Arlie, “of course,” and turned back to the 
first pages of the Atlantic, whereupon Gloria looked up 
coldly, decisively tilting her dark, thrust-out, handsome 
face. “And he’s much too young,” she added, “to be a 
father.” 

“It is too bad.” 

Gloria flicked over another page; Arlie fluttered a 
dozen in a white arc. 

“I hope,” said Gloria, “that Herb can get settled in 
something nice. Mother says he’s talking of a garage 
or a Ford agency, or something of the kind.” 

“Yes, he’s gone to Haley today to look into one.” 

“I hope you won’t encourage him in that.” 

“I’ll try not to.” 

“You see, we all have to help Herb. I can see that 
already. It’s going to be a fearful responsibility, a 
family and all.” 


[192] 


“Yes,” Arlie answered, “7 thought it was. I was glad 
to get Herb’s help.” They had finished their magazines 
and flopped them over at the same instant, whereupon 
Gloria tossed hers on the table and folded her hands. 

“Seriously, though, it is a responsibility, a big one. 
And I think myself that Herb has been awfully decent 
about the whole thing. It didn’t seem to me that there 
was any need of his marrying you at all, if you want 
to know what 7 think. That happens constantly—and the 
girl goes to a hospital and has her child adopted. . . .” 

At first, as Gloria spoke these words, Arlie became 
unaware of her and vividly aware, in memory, of Mrs. 
Shuman. Perhaps this was what she had been thinking 
and regretting all the time, even though she had seemed 
to love the baby and had tried, that evening on the 
porch, to reach across the bleakness to her, the baby’s 
mother. Then Gloria emerged in her handsome solidity 
and Arlie longed for Herb, to see him appear in the door¬ 
way and come to her protectingly to confirm the right¬ 
ness of their marriage and their son, and to scoff at 
adoption. But he didn’t come and she had to speak: 
“Yes,” she said, “I know some girls do. But I didn’t 
even think of it, and I wouldn’t have,” she ended in a 
flare, “if I had!” 

“I didn’t say you should have. I just said that it’s 
often done, and that the fact that Herb didn’t make you 
do it seems to me awfully decent of him, just as I said. 
It isn’t, you know, as if your . . . well, place in life was 
the same as his. If it had been, the whole thing would 
have been different. It wouldn’t have happened.” 

“It wouldn’t have happened?” Arlie looked her ques¬ 
tion as well as asked it. “How do you mean?” 

“Well ... it just wouldn’t ... I don’t know why. 
You’d have been married right away, or something.” 

Arlie stared at her. “I don’t see why.” 

“Oh well,” Gloria rose, “let’s not talk about it. It’s 

[193] 


all done, anyway. Where’s the baby? Haven’t you 
named it yet?” 

“He’s upstairs, asleep. We haven’t named him be¬ 
cause we haven’t found the right name.” 

“Why don’t you call him ‘Jeffrey’ ?” 

“We hadn’t thought of that. It might do. I’ll tell 
Herb.” 

“Come on,” insisted Gloria, “I want to see him. We’ll 
be careful not to wake him.” 

As Gloria preceded her down the room Arlie inspected 
her more closely, admiring her well-built form, larger and 
firmer than her own, the ankles, large but shapely in 
their silk stockings and pumps, and the assured poise of 
the head. She felt altogether too slight and awkward as 
she followed, but drew some consolation from her 
motherhood and the sense of milk tingling in her breasts, 
and immediately drooped abjectly: her motherhood was 
precisely what was wrong. 

If not superiority, at least a degree of equality pos¬ 
sessed her, however, when Gloria woke the baby with 
an awkward movement and he began to whimper, curling 
his lower lip pathetically before crying. Gloria sat si¬ 
lent on the radiator by the window while Arlie nursed 
him, and when, after a time, they did talk again, it was 
about the house, Bright Valley generally, Lawson, and 
the efficiency of Mrs. Gardewine. 

5 

At dinner Gloria absorbed most of the time, relating 
her recent adventures with her friends at the lake, and 
receding through those to the events of the school year, 
sorority activities, chatter about courses. Arlie turned 
with relief to Mr. Shuman. 

“Well, Arlie,” he said, “how’s Squggins tonight? Any 
colic?” 


[194] 


“No—that’ll come about two in the morning,” she 
smiled. 

“You haven’t started him on the alphabet, have 
you ?” 

“Not yet. Next week will be soon enough, don’t you 
think? Or maybe you meant the letters in soups?” 

“Oh yes, certainly.” 

It was thus that they always talked, and Arlie saw now 
for the first time—with Gloria there for contrast—the 
extent of his condescension to her. 

Before Mrs. Gardewine brought the dessert Arlie had 
to fly to the baby, who was crying lustily. When she 
returned Mr. Shuman had left the table and Gloria and 
her mother, lingering over dessert, were quite too clearly 
changing the subject. The transparency of it allowed a 
bitter light of loneliness to strike through at her. She 
finished her meal in flushed silence, and went early to bed. 
When the little silver clock on the dresser marked three 
o’clock and she was putting the bottle of catnip and fen¬ 
nel in its place for the fourth time, Herb’s car roared 
up the driveway. She lay waiting to hear his step, 
which soon sounded cautiously on the stairs. Then, 
very slowly and gently, the door opened and his tall form 
stole across the room to the baby’s bed. 

“Careful, Herb,” she whispered. “I just got him to 
sleep. He’s had an awful colic.” 

Tip-toeing to her bed he sat down. . “I just wanted to 
see the little dufifer. Got to thinking about him coming 
home. Anything wrong but the colic ?” 

“No, I guess not. My milk may be a little bit off. 
It’s been hard without you. I thought you weren’t com¬ 
ing till noon tomorrow—or today I guess it is.” 

“Nope, I didn’t like the place, wanted to get out of it. 
No pep. What’s wrong with your milk?” 

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s been sorta hard—Gloria came 
home.” 

[195] 


“Oh, did she? That’s right though. How’d you like 
her ?” 

“I don’t know. . . . She thought I ought to of gone to 
a hospital and had the baby adopted.” 

“Hell!” he exclaimed. 

“Sh—you’ll wake him. . . . She wants him called Jef¬ 
frey. Do you like that name, Herb ?” 

“God, no! She’s dippy. Probably got a case on some 
guy named Jeffrey. Leave her to me.” 

She drew him closer. “I wish you’d take me with you 
next time you go.” 

“I couldn’t do that very well, with the baby.” 

“No, I suppose not. But can’t we get away some¬ 
where, a house of our own, and all?” 

Herb placed a very comforting arm under her upraised 
head. 

“I got a little plan, old girl. I’ll tell you about it to¬ 
morrow, after I spring it on dad. . . . And it’s better to 
stay here till you get your strength back.” 

“But I have already, Herb, all I need. And I want to 
be alone, with you.” 

“Not any more than I do, kid. This 'getting your 
strength back’ isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, in my opin¬ 
ion. Just how long is it going to take, anyway?” 

She snuggled her head closer and spoke thickly. “1— 
I feel all right now, Herb.” 

He tossed her back suddenly and roughly, and her face 
lay exposed. 

“Do you mean—tonight?” 

She nodded. Whereupon the baby stirred, whimpered, 
and began to cry. Arlie leapt out of bed to go to him, 
but had no more than reached his side than the door 
into Herb’s room banged shut behind her, echoing ex¬ 
plosively on the silence of the night. It was four o’clock 
before the baby was fundamentally asleep again and she 
could lie down to the uninterrupted tumult of dreams. 

[196] 


CHAPTER XIII 


ORANGE STICKS 

I 

Arlie and Herb breakfasted late and alone, and Arlie 
returned upstairs to give the baby his bath. Gloria in¬ 
truded on the last of that ritual, and despite Arlie’s ab¬ 
sorption in her task chatted very graciously. 

“After you get him asleep come on in my room, and 
we’ll visit. I want to know you better, and I have to do 
my nails,” Gloria said, examining them. “They’re 
in frightful shape. Will you, dear?” 

“It may be some time before I can, he’s so fretful 
now it’s getting hot,” Arlie answered. Yet she went, 
able to hold herself back no more than she could have 
kept her tongue from an aching tooth, for she wanted to 
discover, if she could, the darkest opinions Gloria might 
be holding. 

But Gloria’s talk was principally of manicuring. “I 
was fifteen or sixteen, anyway, before I realized how im¬ 
portant it is for a woman to be particular—about every¬ 
thing. I didn’t use to wash my hair over once a month, 
or brush it more than once a day. Maybe a whisk or 
two at night. But now I never think of not brushing it 
for twenty minutes, at least. It’s helped, too.” 

Arlie glanced at Gloria’s glossy black piles. She, too, 
would do better—twenty minutes regularly. 

“It’s so easy to get slovenly.” Gloria inspected the 

[197] 


rosy glaze of a finger nail and buffed it again. “There 

was a girl in the sorority who just didn’t use anything 

but a file, just a metal file, until she was a Senior. I 
don’t know how she got in. Imagine—not using orange 
sticks till one’s twenty-two!’’ 

Arlie wondered where Herb’s finger-nail clip was; she 
had occasionally used it, or a toothpick, when the clip 
could not be found. She had been very careful, too, 

when she had seen Herb’s frequent use of the clip. 

“It shows, / think, what advantages one has, where one 
is in life, you know.” 

“I suppose it does,” Arlie assented. “I hadn’t thought 
of it—much.” (“Where one is in life”—that is, “one’s 
place in life.” What was the connection between orange 
sticks and virtue?) 

“I’ve always said,” Gloria continued, “though I guess 
mother said it first, that a woman who doesn’t make the 
most of her person doesn’t have the right to one. She 
gets to have no personality, no poise, you know.” 

“Um-hmm. (Arlie wondered if she had a “person¬ 
ality.” Maybe fifteen minutes a day would be enough 
for her hair, especially since she had a baby to look 
after.) 

“Mother gave me this set when I started to college.” 

“It’s an awfully nice one.” 

“It’s getting sort of shabby now. But it does. . . . 
Why don’t you make Herb give you one?” 

“Oh well, there are so many things, you know, and the 
baby’s quite an expense. I haven’t so much time, either, 
to be monkeying around.” 

“Monkeying around! . . . I don’t call this ‘Monkey¬ 
ing around. It’s work, that’s what it is. But it’s work 
that has to be done.” 

(Ten minutes would suffice admirably for her hair.) 

“Oh, of course,” Arlie said hastily. “I didn’t mean 
that. I just meant that . . . well, with me there are so 

[198] 


many things that I have to do first. I couldn’t possibly 
spend twenty minutes on my hair if I were keeping house 
too. Here I can, all right, there’s only the baby. And 
I do lots of that sort of thing.” 

“You do?” Gloria was casually both affirmative and 
sceptical. 

“Yes, and I want to be particular about the baby, too. 
But I know when I’m keeping house it’ll be different. 
I’ll have to let something slide.” 

“I don’t see why. It’s all in having system. Now 
Marion Chichester—you don’t know her, of course—but 
she married a lawyer in Cedar Rapids. You ought to 
see her house. Neat as a pin, and her baby’s healthy, and 
she keeps up—in everything. Reads just volumes. But 
she’s just as neat herself as she can be.” 

“Dad used to work in Cedar Rapids,” Arlie said. 

Later in the day she overheard Mrs. Shuman and 
Gloria. “Well, mother,” Gloria was saying, “I asked her 
to come in and visit with me while I did my nails, so we 
could get acquainted better, you know. I talked about 
taking pains with oneself—just like you used to. I was 
as diplomatic as I could be. But I don’t think it did 
much good. Like water on a duck’s back, it was. Do 
you suppose we can do Anything ? Oh, mother!” 

Arlie caught only the sigh that prefaced Mrs. Shu¬ 
man’s response before she fled upstairs as lightly as pos¬ 
sible, sick at heart. “Oh, mother!” The words quavered 
in her through the day. When she went down to lunch, 
however, her nails were immaculate, but when she went 
to bed she did not even braid her hair. 

2 

The baby, whom they had not yet named, became a 
refuge for Arlie in the days that followed, and during 
that time it was as if strange crystals broke in her, one 

[199] 


by one, until she was flooded with a need for him, a de¬ 
sire to care for him that made of every restrained im¬ 
patience a growing love. Roused by a cry in the sleep- 
sodden middle of the night she tended the baby without 
a word of even inner protest, as if by so doing she 
was making up to him some element denied herself. 
It had not been so after the birth. Then she had beheld 
him as if beyond an invisible glass of alienation, the 
cause, though an innocent one, of her long trouble, but 
whom it was futile to blame; whom it was even pitiful 
not to love. At the time she could not love; she could 
only wonderingly handle, hold him close, and try—vainly 
—to think him close and hers. That, he was only now 
becoming. Slowly but persistently through a dissolving 
mist of unfamiliarity he took a chubby definiteness and a 
place of his own. 

She would catch him to her bared breast in a seizure 
of need and a desperate realization that she could never 
again completely surround him with herself, enveloping 
him wholly through her body in a love she had never 
given when he had been within it. No caresses could 
narrow the separation widening with the days. 

3 

Gloria, in the wide bright weeks of July, began an¬ 
other attack, first reading the little green book by Holt 
on The Care and Feeding of Children. Other books 
followed, each read exhaustively, until she could set 
against each other the contradictory conclusions of the 
authorities. She was a living Sic et Non. She read, too, 
all the treatises on pregnancy that she could find, and 
would come frequently to Arlie’s room to check up the 
facts, hinting gently at first, and then flat-footedly ques¬ 
tioning in tones that were boldly casual and disinterested. 

[200] 


At times Arlie responded frankly, but usually found it 
difficult to be more than monosyllabic as Gloria dissected 
her own physiological future on her sister-in-law’s ca¬ 
daver. When Arlie tried instead to speak of present 
things, Gloria invariably began to criticize the routine, 
or lack of it, of the baby’s care. Several times as they 
discussed the proper methods their words were edged; 
usually Arlie had to retreat to a sullen defence of a 
mother’s intuition, and Gloria turned the pages of Holt in 
a flutter of refutation and a triumph of citation. The 
major dispute was over the wisdom or unwisdom of nurs¬ 
ing the baby whenever he cried for the breast. In the 
end he was put on regular hours during the day, but 
variations still disturbed the night. More than once Ar¬ 
lie was grateful for what regularity had been achieved, 
though she would never have acknowledged it to 
Gloria. 


4 

Herb kept discreetly on the outskirts of the argument. 
At night he was willing that Arlie nurse the baby into 
silence; at other times what happened did not so nerv¬ 
ously matter, since he spent his days in town. 

On his return from Haley he had gone to his father 
with the plan he had spoken of to Arlie. He proposed 
that he learn banking at the Lawson State Bank and later 
go to some larger town. His father agreed and he had 
started work. Later, they planned, Herb should go to 
the First National Bank in Finley, sixty miles east, 
in which Mr. Shuman held a majority of the stock 
and where the elderly cashier was expecting to retire in a 
year or two. It was hoped that Herb would be ready to 
take his place. There was a possibility, too, of going 
to Cedar Rapids or to Des Moines. 

[ 201 ] 


In the second week of his work Herb drove into the 
yard in a new Ford, honking for Arlie. “Why, Herb,” 
she called from the window, “whose car’s that?” 

“Mine,” he answered with a grin. “That is, ours, I 
mean. Dad gave it to me. Said it was too much bother 
running in to get me, and we’d need it in Finley, anyway, 
if we go there. Come on down and let’s beat it for a 
little.” 

When they had driven away, with the baby sleeping in 
profound innocence in Arlie’s arms, ownership mastered 
them. They grinned at each other ecstatically, neither 
finding a word for a long three miles. 

“It’s the first thing really our own, isn’t it, Herb?” 

“It sure is. Of course it’s only a Ford, but I guess 
the damn’ little thing isn’t so bad after all. We’ll get our 
Packard in time, old girl. And think how handy it’ll 
be for me now. No hurrying to get out of the bank; I 
can wait till I finish.” 

Silence followed as they flew past corn and pasture and 
grove. 

“It’s like old times, isn’t it?” Arlie said at last. 

“How do you mean—riding around together?” 

“Um-hmm, only Pansy and Dolly ain’t—aren’t here.” 

“Nope,” he answered soberly, “no Pansy, no Dolly. 
Just us and the kid.” 

“We ought to name him, Herb.” 

“Might call him Ford,” he suggested. “Not bad, is it 
—Ford Shuman?” 

“Oh, be sensible! I’d thought more of Peter, after 
your father.” 

“Naw—dad hates the name too much himself.” 

“Well, ‘Herbert’ then?” 

“Hell no! No kid of mine’s going to be called ‘Her¬ 
bert!’ But we got plenty of time. No hurry about it, 
at all. I’m going to let her out a little. I don’t care if 
I do burn her out. Hold on to the kid.” 

[202] 


5 

In the evenings Herb studied various books on bank¬ 
ing that his mother had ordered for him. At first he 
had scofifed at the idea of learning anything helpful from 
books his mother would choose, but when he had looked 
them over his interest had been attached, with the result 
that he read them thoroughly and ordered more. As he 
studied he began to plan and to explain to Arlie various 
financial processes—thoroughly incomprehensible. When 
the talk turned to what he would do in Finley she brought 
the subject gradually around to their whole mode of 
life there, and so to the house they would have and its 
furnishings. 

There followed a miraculous evening with the thick 
catalogues of the mail order houses, in which Arlie 
marked the articles she desired: the range, the linoleum 
for the kitchen, the dining-room set, the beds, the mat¬ 
tresses. Herb read the descriptions of all of these, over¬ 
ruling some of Arlie’s choices, concurring in others. 
But at the last he had marred the whole evening by sug¬ 
gesting that while it was nice to pick from the catalogue, 
of course they’d have to buy at home. Then they’d be 
sure to get what they wanted. 

“But Herb,” she protested, “we can’t go to Finley and 
start buying there. They wouldn’t have some things 
we’d need. And I don’t see what difference it makes to 
Finley whether we buy in Lawson or Chicago.” 

“Well,” he announced heavily, “it’s the principle of the 
thing. Then, too, we can’t get what we want at Sears, 
Roebuck. Take that dining-room set. It’s too jiggly 
and all. We want something quieter and not so flashy.” 

Arlie pouted. The only “principle” that she could see 
was that they were not to buy of a Chicago mail order 
house, and the projected rapture of turning the pages 
and comparing the merits of the dishpan at 89 cents with 
the one at $1.18 was dulled. 

[203] 


Mrs. Shuman, helped a little the next day when she 
took Arlie to the attic to inspect the furniture stored in 
dusty order. Relics of her own former days sat there 
abandoned: a veneered bird’s-eye maple bedroom suite; 
a metal bed that had once been Gloria’s; a shaving mirror 
with a red cherry frame and shelves, and an old marble- 
topped table with curly legs. 

“Oh!” said Arlie; and could hardly leave the place for 
luncheon. 

At her mother-in-law’s suggestion .she drew up long 
lists of articles they would need, first checking off those 
already in the attic, and estimating the prices of the rest. 
The work was thoroughly done and Mrs. Shuman ap¬ 
proved it. 

Then came ordering and assembling, a room being set 
aside for the purpose. Into this Arlie had the men move 
from the attic the pieces she intended to use, and there, 
in the hot mornings while Herb was at the bank, she 
scraped and painted and polished. 

“I want everything spandy,” she explained to Gloria, 
who often came in to watch. “But I’m glad, too, to have 
some of them look old. It won’t look ... all newness, 
you know. Like a store.” 

“Yes,” Gloria assented, “they’ll have associations—for 
Herb, anyway.” 

Arlie felt that a door had been shut somewhere. But, 
she reflected, the long hours that were preparing the fur¬ 
niture would give even her some associations, once their 
home was established. What remained to trouble her 
was the fact that she and her family were giving nothing 
toward the household that was every day becoming more 
vivid. She realized, suddenly, that Mrs. Shuman had ac¬ 
cepted that condition without a word or a suggestion that 
any one other than herself was to furnish anything. She 
had known, but had never really thought, of the agree¬ 
ment between Mr. and Mrs. Shuman whereby she was to 

[204] 


outfit the house and baby, and he was to arrange Herb’s 
position in the bank, giving him enough stock to assure 
him an interest and something of an income outside his 
salary. Arlie did not like that agreement now; she 
wanted something, at least, to come from the Gelstons. 

It was not until they checked over the list of bedding 
that she found her way. Then she recalled the stuffy 
quantity of quilts and comforters that her mother had re¬ 
tained, practically unused. Herb should take her to 
Coon Falls. 


6 

On Sunday morning they put the baby on a pillow in 
a clothes basket, wedged the basket into the rear of the 
car, and started. 

The day was beautiful with a hot Sabbatical serenity 
that further subdued even the quiet of the countryside. 
The corn, high above the barbed wire, opened its droop¬ 
ing palms. Fields of clover blossom succeeded, and their 
amethyst levels, smoothed by the light, paled toward the 
abrupt blue of the sky. Overhead was an intense, corn- 
colored sun, and a low breath of honey flowed to them. 

As they drove they were silent, and as the honey- 
scented silence flew with them it became for Arlie an 
emotionally rich quiet. Her former worries had dropped 
away, present worries were hushed under her preoccupa¬ 
tion with their plans, and she was conscious of marriage. 

Shortly she would have a house of her own. Already 
she had more money to spend than she had dreamed of 
in former days. And Herb was now her husband in 
reality. Through a slow crescendo of developing knowl¬ 
edge she was coming to possess with him formless, in¬ 
valuable fundamentals that lay about their common life 
as powerful and unseen as changes of atmospheric pres¬ 
sure. Thrust forward from all this upon a filled 
moment she was riding, in their own automobile, to 

[205] 


lord it over the circumstance of the denying past. 

Far off a mist of dust hung above the road; through 
the mottling obscurity cattle crept into view, followed 
by men on horseback. As they neared the swinging con¬ 
fusion Herb sent the car into a side road and the herd 
pounded by, heads levelled to the line of their backs, 
rushing with dull inquisitiveness down the opposite road. 
One of the horsemen yipped after them. 

“Feeders,” Herb observed. “Must be McRobert’s. 
Going to be a lot of money in them. Dad’ll have some 
along by next Sunday.” 

The powerful onrush had passed and the road was 
clearing, but the confusion roared distantly in Arlie’s 
ears: power going up the road ... to be fed ... to be 
fattened . . . comfort . . . and comfort might become 
more, something she didn’t have . . . something she 
wasn’t. 


7 

It was a little disappointing, when they drove into 
Coon Falls and drew up in front of the Gelston house, 
to see only her father on the front porch, a Sunday paper 
scattered about his rocker and his suspenders dangling 
from his trousers. 

He looked up from his paper in answer to Arlie’s 
“Hoo-hoo,” and as they approached the house he rose to 
meet them, slipping his suspenders into place and stand¬ 
ing on the top step as gaunt and awkward as ever, but 
somehow strange. 

“Why, pa, you got glasses! When’d you get ’em ?” 

“H’lo, Arlie, how are you? ’Most a month I’ve had 
’em now. How d’you do, Mr. Shuman.” He extended 
his hand. 

“Now don’t call Herb Mr. Shuman, pa. He’s Herb, 
aren’t you, Herb? You take the baby a minute. 
Where’s ma, in the house?” 

[206] 


“Just sit down, won’t you? Take that chair. I’ll 
bring out some more. . . . Your ma went some place. 
She’ll be back though.” 

Herb sat down with the baby in his arms; Oliver 
dragged chairs out to the porch and Arlie went inside. 

The hall and the dining-room greeted her with the drab 
patience of years, and outside the kitchen door the patch 
of ground bared and blackened by the out-flung dish¬ 
water showed its old ragged contours and the same dirtied 
potato peelings. She went upstairs to her old room. 

That, which she had expected to find the same—if she 
had expected anything, and the change would have let her 
discover that she had—was altered toward emptiness. 
The drawers of the dresser, after sticking, gave out sud¬ 
denly to disclose their boards. A dust of strangeness 
filmed the top. Grayness hung over the whole room, 
which she faced wonderingly, trying to think back the 
covers on the thinly striped, naked mattress. The room 
was empty now: empty of dreams and hope and misery, 
a forlorn little room . . . room stuck on the room be¬ 
neath; winds would beat against it . . . exposed to all 
the winds, and to the corrosion of its own blind silence. 
She stood there wanting dumbly to cry; but instead she 
closed the door softly behind her and went down. 

In the dining-room she saw the bud vases that she had 
purchased months ago sitting in the confusion of the 
sideboard, dusty and empty too. 

8 

“Did ma go to Horacks’, pa?” she asked as she joined 
the men on the porch. 

“I guess so. Usually she’s there.” 

“Don’t you think that’s a fine boy ? Here, give him to 
me.” 

“He sure is. I was just telling Mr. Shuman, though, 

[207] 


that you’d ought to name Mm. Going on his fourth 
month, ain’t he?” 

“Four months in September. But why do you keep 
on calling Herb mister for, pa?” 

Her father looked at her sidewise through his glasses 
—almost timidly; swallowed, but said nothing. Herb 
spoke up: “Who do you think the boy looks like?” 

“Well, I don’t know. He’s almost too young to tell, 
ain’t he?” 

“Do you think maybe he looks like Arlie?” 

Oliver considered. “Well, I rather guess I do, sir.” 

The “sir” annoyed Arlie, but why she couldn’t tell. 
Then her mother was seen coming from Horacks’. She 
failed to respond to Arlie’s wave, and as she came up the 
walk glanced half nervously, half appraisingly, at Herb. 

“Gee, I was afraid we was going to miss you, ma. 
And I needed to see you about some things.” 

“Hello, Mrs. Gelston.” Herb rose from his chair. 
Mrs. Gelston extended her arm as if they were shaking 
hands with difficulty across a creek; throughout she sus¬ 
tained an air mingled of flabby dignity and defence. 

“I’m glad to see you, Mr. Shuman.” 

“I’m glad to see you, Mrs. Gelston.” (The “Mrs.” in 
Herb’s mouth was easy and familiar and right.) “Ev¬ 
erything fine with you, is it?” 

“Why, yes sir. I guess it is.” A nervous laugh. 
“Oliver, you might give Mr. Shuman a good chair in¬ 
stead of that thing we keep on the porch.” 

“Well, I offered him this, but—” 

“I’m on the porch, all right, I guess,” Herb put in. 
Mrs. Gelston turned to Arlie. “Arlie, do you have lots 
of mi—lots of—everything you need for the baby, I 
mean ?” 

“Why yes. Don’t be afraid to say milk before Herb. 
He knows I nurse the baby. And I have everything I 
need, too, besides. What I want, though, is some blank- 

[208] 


ets and quilts and comforters. We’re going to have a 
house of our own in October. Over in Finley it is. 
Herb’s going to be cashier in the bank there. And you 
got a lot of bedding you’re not using and I want some.” 

When they went in to sort through the supply Mrs. 
Gelston was lavish. “I don’t need this,” she said, “and 
I ain’t even opened this Irish chain lace, except to air it, 
for five years.” So they were piled ready to be carried 
to the car. 

Then her mother quizzed Arlie on her recent life, on 
Mrs. Shuman, Mr. Shuman, Gloria. The clothes Arlie 
wore she examined with care, fingering the organdy of 
the dress and feeling the silk stockings on Arlie’s ankles. 
“My, that’s good stuff,” she pronounced. 

“I thought so,” Arlie said, and tried to say it as in¬ 
differently as possible, looking away from her mother’s 
eyes, that were inquiring how far Arlie had advanced in 
finding such luxury usual. 


9 

At night Arlie rested contentedly after the completion 
of the day. Herb was dropping farther into sleep at her 
side, beginning his light snore. She was glad, even in 
that lethargic moment, because of his uncouth strength 
beside her, in whose rough grasp she had lain, and who 
was, after the female cloying of her life, an exacting 
fundamental. She moved to touch him. 


[209] 


CHAPTER XIV 


FINLEY 

I 

In October Arlie, Herb, and the baby—finally named 
Gerald—moved to Finley. Three days after they had 
shipped their household goods they drove in their Ford 
between pale fields and rich trees thinning before winter, 
and through towns becoming gray, until they reached 
their home. 

Herb had driven over in September to rent a house, 
which, with the help of Burr, the cashier in the bank, 
had been easy to find—a modern bungalow on the edge 
of town. He had also hired a woman to help Arlie with 
the settling. 

They found the woman seated on the steps of the 
bungalow, but the goods were still at the station. By 
noon the procrastinating drayman had bestirred himself 
and work began. Because everything except curtain rods 
had been remembered they were comfortable by night 
and were really established by the end of the week. 

Even in November their unconscious customs had be¬ 
gun to set and were falling into the narrow patterns of 
married life. Already the new days were merging indis- 
tinguishably into the conglomerate of time behind them. 
Herb was finding his work at the bank more usual and 
Arlie was becoming acquainted; there were calls, and 
calls returned. On Sunday they went to church, leaving 

[ 210 ] 


the baby in the charge of a neighbor girl, Gracia Went- 
ling. Church was not a matter of special desire or con¬ 
viction with either; they went because going was expected 
and because Herb wished to identify himself with the 
town. As for Arlie, she never thought of her conver¬ 
sion, of Murkleman, of Mrs. Holcomb. She knew, when 
she was asked one time, that she did not want to join the 
church, and that she would never want to join. What 
she did want was to belong to the circle with whom the 
church was a rather meaningless form of Sabbatical ac¬ 
tivity, like the reading of the Chicago Sunday Tribune. 
She went to one and read the other. 

As the weeks seemed to secure them she grew uncom¬ 
fortable : there was more to be lost now than ever, and 
if only one person in the town should know of Gerald’s 
birth, or even one person from Coon Falls pass through 
town, it would not be long before everybody . . . Yet 
she saw more directly now, more realistically. Even fear 
disintegrated before time and contact. Time was longer 
than one thought: when the bend came there was always 
another stretch of road. She knew that she could face 
even an informed Finley, but Finley uninformed was 
happier, looser. 

2 

‘‘What you do today?” Herb asked one November 
evening as he carved the steak. 

“I called on Mrs. Weaver for one thing.” 

“Remember your cards?” 

“Of course I did. What do you take me for?” 

“Well, you didn’t at first. Mother told me to remind 
you about them. I wouldn’t of thought of it myself, 
probably.” 

“Oh, she did, did she? Well, you can just tell her I’m 
not such a dunce as she and the rest of your family take 
me for. ... I want more gravy than that.” 

[211] 


“That enough? ... You don’t need to get mad. I 
didn’t mean anything. It’s just that . . . oh, well.” 

As they ate, Arlie’s indignation was quieted; partly she 
had been hungry. “Just what does Mr. Weaver do, 
Herb?” she asked presently. 

“Some sort of cheap lawyer, I guess. Makes his liv¬ 
ing on insurance and collections.” 

“Is he well off?” 

“Hell no! Not out of debt on his education yet, Burr 
says.” 

“Then I guess she hasn’t any right to be snippy.” 

“What did she say?” 

Arlie drank some water before replying. “Well, she 
was sorta feeling around. ‘When was we married?’ she 
asked, and then later, ‘What was the baby’s name?’ But 
she didn’t catch me. Only afterwards when I was going 
she poked at Gerald till she made him cry and said she 
thought it was just fine of young couples to have children 
early—‘so very early’ she said, and sorta smiled. 

“Yes, and then went on to talk of how she and Mr. 
Weaver hoped they could have a baby. She just loved 
children, she said.” 

“I’ll bet. Well ... let her talk . . . and then let 
hubby come around to raise some kale. I’ll show ’em 
where to get off at. . . . But how could she know?” 

“How can I tell? I don’t know that she does, really, 
only it was sorta funny.” 

The incident had been souring in her mind ever since 
she had returned home, and Mrs. Weaver’s smile had 
persisted until it had broadened to a malevolent grin. 
But as the weeks succeeded and brought no recurrence 
of intended smiles Arlie began to breathe again and to 
forget. 

The winter deepened, sending a silence with its 
snow that made the more infrequent noises clearer and 
whitely distinct. Just so her new life rang out above 

[ 212 ] 


the dull plain of the old: there were the comfortable 
bungalow; the good meals she could now cook; the in¬ 
creasing plumpness of Gerald; the discovery, in the 
bridge club she and Herb had joined, that she might be¬ 
come a good card-player; the long evenings after Gerald 
was asleep and the dishes were washed when she and 
Herb talked or read. 

For she was reading now. When Mrs. Shuman had 
insisted, Arlie had been reluctant; but with the pressure 
removed she found she wanted the books she had ig¬ 
nored, and wrote her mother-in-law for a package of 
them. More were added at Christmas time, and with 
great difficulty she ordered some herself through the lo¬ 
cal drug store, having read of them in the Outlook and 
a Des Moines newspaper. By February she had read all 
of Winston Churchill, and had sat up nights with Rider 
Haggard’s She and Allan Quartermain. Chesterton’s 
Club of Queer Trades enthralled her, but turning to his 
Heretics she gave it up after forty pages to read Kipps 
and Tono-Bungay. She was crying when she finished 
the account of Kipps in the London hotel, and after one 
more book by Wells, which interested her mildly, she 
went with Herb on a prolonged debauch of O. Henry. 
Conrad, whom Mrs. Shuman had recommended to Arlie 
without having read him, proved too tropically mysteri¬ 
ous, and she closed his pages with the impression that in 
Conrad’s world everything was purple or immobile, and 
often both. Shaw’s Man and Superman perplexed her; 
she could not comprehend Don Juan’s motives in choos¬ 
ing the heaven depicted by the Statue. 

3 

“I hope Gerald’s asleep,” Arlie said as she and Herb 
stumbled through snowdrifts gleaming under the electric 
lights. They turned in at the bungalow, which was lifted 

[213] 


into brown prominence by the stilled white waves on the 
ground. 

“He’ll be all right,” Herb affirmed thickly, stamping 
the snow from his shoes. 

The inside of the house was a suppressed shout of 
warmth. Gerald was asleep, and had been asleep for the 
last three hours, they were informed by Gracia Wentling, 
the flaxen-haired girl who had cared for him. Herb 
went at once to the furnace and Arlie sat by the register. 
After one had been inside for a few minutes it wasn’t so 
warm after all. 

“Believe me,” Herb said as he washed his hands at the 
kitchen sink on his return from the furnace, “these Fin- 
leyites sure don’t know how to get up a dance. Never 
had such a dull time in my life. Jesus!” 

“Those college guys make me tired,” Arlie supple¬ 
mented. 

“Same here.” Herb had also seated himself by the 
register. “It’s no fun when all the live muts stay in a 
bunch by themselves.” 

“I suppose you wanted to dance with the girls.” 

“Not any more’n you did with the boys. . . . Well, 
didn’t you?” 

“Yes, I did. That married crowd is all right, I sup¬ 
pose, but I don’t like to dance with ’em. They’re . . . 
oh, I don’t know. You just feel sure, though, that 
they’re going home just like us.” 

“It’s an old barn of a hall. They got a lot better floor 
in Lawson; Coon Falls, too, for that matter.” 

“Do you remember that dance in Coon Falls, Herb? 
The Fourth it was, when I met you?” 

“Yeh . . . let’s see. Who’d I take—Marvel? Mother 
was saying that she’s going to be a nurse, out in Omaha. 
She wasn’t so bad. Good dancer, too.” 

“Gee, I was jealous of her that night. Seemed to me 

[214] 


she had everything I wanted, a nice name, good clothes, 
and a—handsome fellow.” 

Herb grinned. “And now you got ’em yourself—the 
handsome fellow especially—you can’t see why you was 
ever so jealous?” 

“No, it’s not that. . . .” 

“Huh, what is it, then?” His voice held the edge of 
other possible questions. 

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s all so long ago. Five years 
it seems like. My, I thought you were a good dancer. 
Of course, you are. . . 

“Um-hmm. Thanks. But what it is you’re thinking 
about, back of all this palaver?” 

What was she thinking? No thought at all, only rest¬ 
less quaverings of old tunes that no one sang any 
more. . . . 

The ache in her back was spreading to lassitude, to an 
overpowering inability to rise, to think, even to speak. 
All had been different on that night; more had been held 
within it. The remote flash of a dance had lit every hori¬ 
zon, a summer lightning that was gone. She couldn’t say 
anything to Herb about the dim way she remembered. 
She was too tired to say it, even if she could. 

Herb was going to insist. “What’s back of all this 
talk ?” 

How to rise through the effectual weight of water upon 
her? She could not . . . and then was talking. “I 
don’t know, Herb. It’s just that I was thinking about 
. . . what marriage does to people. They get pasty.” 

“Pasty? What are you talking about?” 

“Oh, can’t you see?” 

“Come on, you’re dippy for sleep.” 

In the middle of the night she turned to him, a heretic 
seeking the communion. It was given as penance, as a 
punishment that hurt and saved, and because it saved 

[2!S] 


became a cutting physical light in which doubts were 
burned away. Soggy with sleep she groped back to the 
bed, felt mechanically to see that Gerald was covered, 
and sank again beside Herb, who was already riding the 
slow rhythm of sleep. Blackness stole from everywhere 
to enclose her, and through blackness she sank, life put 
out, to the hard darkness, whence to the recall of day 
she would bring back no dreams. Sleep become infinite. 

4 

The dirty interval between winter and spring settled 
upon Finley as an abomination. It was crude and im¬ 
perfect as birth, and irritable with winds of false warmth. 
Arlie splashed out of town on desperate walks, all to 
fight out something that was obscurely choking. It did 
not come as a struggle at first. 

Snug within the winter she had lived her life fully, 
reverting from her books to service unlit by reflection; to 
an animal contentment with her house, her husband, her 
baby, herself. Spring wakened harshness in her; she 
snapped at Herb and slapped Gerald with little provoca¬ 
tion. Herb was usual as the food she cooked, and that 
she too might be becoming so to him was perhaps the 
fact she fled—up the abrupt hills and along the roads 
soaring level above the valley. 

One of the walks began, toward its end, to bring sur¬ 
cease from the dark, inner grope. The wind, shouting 
high above the fields that were graying into the first black 
of spring, struck at her individually. She came clean. 
For a quarter of a mile farther she broke the wind, and 
returning found the earth firmer, drier. She was going 
back to Herb, to Gerald, to Finley—a mess of blocks 
and angles, brown mass and isolated flat white awry upon 
the ground. Overhead the sky’s gray indifference was 
varied in the southwest by milky translucei.ce, behind 

[216] 


which lay intolerable light. Beyond and below were 
order, warmth, the touch of used furniture, the hard, 
new, plastery smell of the back entry. Her own house, 
at least, where waited what had seemed to her the con¬ 
summation of life, and where yet lay all she felt she 
was to have. Beyond that was—only itself again, in the 
key of another place. She should be satisfied. She was. 
And the wind came clean as knives. 

Yet at dinner: 

“What you been doing this afternoon?” 

“Went for a walk.” 

“Poor day for a walk. What you do with Gerald?” 

“Left him with Gracia. I wanted to think, even if it 
was a punk day. But I couldn’t . . . too windy.” 

“What you talking about? Honest, Arlie, sometimes 
I don’t get you.” 

“Don’t try.” 

“But—” The “but” poised, hung there like a blunt 
thing, obtuse, invulnerable. She wanted, suddenly and 
inexplicably, to hit him, his word, Gerald, anything. She 
only let her hand fall heavily to the table, spilling water 
from her overfull tumbler. Her nerves whined at the 
defect. “Shut up, can’t you! I told you not to try. 
Look there—!” 

“Why Arlie!” 

She gave in, apologized, threw her arms around his 
neck and kissed him; and later, for the first time, refused 
him. 

All the next morning she sang at her work, poked lav¬ 
ish and loving fun at Gerald while he cried throughout 
his bath, and whisked her work away with manipulations 
never before half so efficient. At lunch she was alert 
and laughing, kissed Herb an effusive good-bye, and in 
the afternoon read racingly, forgetful of Herb, baby, and 
self. At four o’clock she threw down her book. She 
was too happy to read. If only she could stop to listen 

[217] 


she felt that she might hear music playing distantly. But 
an abounding energy drove her on. 

At night she went to her bedroom in terror at finding 
her valiance gone. Sleep remained, something to be done 
—almost somewhere—away from here—to go. She 
rushed into bed as if she were boarding a moving train, 
expecting to be rushed immediately into sleep, but only 
to lie there in inert disappointment that the train was 
after all not going to move. 


5 

By inserting the handle of a brush she adjusted the 
angle of the mirror. Unquestionably her face was 
plumper and colorful. A year of married life, of what 
must be happiness, had not passed without deposit. She 
was aware of change. Also, unemotionally, she was 
aware of what had been happening just a year ago. She 
must have been waiting for Dr. Taylor at about this 
time of day, she was not sure of hours. At present her 
mother was miles distant, puttering futilely in the kitchen 
with yesterday’s unwashed dishes. Exactly a year ago 
she had not thought of marriage, and a year ago plus 
twelve hours, she had been married, the room had be¬ 
come quiet, and she was entered on what had led to this: 
this house, this room, this mirror. And herself sitting 
before it, wondering if rouge would help her color or if 
she had better leave it as it was, if perhaps the blue of 
her forward eyes wasn’t all she should hope for. But 
if she brought her hair farther down on her fore¬ 
head . . . there . . . her face gained . . . pungency? 
. . . piquancy? Piquancy was the word. Where had 
she read it? At present it was what she wanted to be 
but knew she wasn’t. A good word, though. Her eyes 
became almost mysterious with her hair that way. But 
could anybody with freckles across the bridge of the 

[218] 


nose be mysterious? The winter should have bleached 
them. Then her nose might get credit for being straight 
and delicate. Lips could be brightened by rubbing them 
against the teeth. Mrs. Weaver used a lip-stick. They 
were better brightened. . . . She stared at the complete 
picture: the face that was a little thin even beneath its 
new plumpness. Were the eyes a little wild. . . . An 
alien bright face swayed there in the mirror, a light of 
ghostly unfamiliarity playing upon it, upon the lines that 
losing accustomedness were novel as an unknown face, 
with what hard, undiscoverable personality behind she 
could not tell, could not reach ... a Face hung before 
her out of indistinguishable heights, deep as the sky in 
what is untouched and unknown. The defeat of night¬ 
mare, necessity of hopeless clutching vainly out toward 
the hardness and sureness of what has been and as a 
chasm is no more . . . that Face hers and not hers, her 
face seen as another might see it. Shock of softness, 
nothing ... it was gone. She was clutching the top of 
the bureau, staring idiotically at only herself. 

She walked to the window, but was still a little dizzy 
with the fumes as of a nightmare subsiding in her brain. 

6 

Gerald was hitching himself along the wall when Herb 
returned that evening and tossed him a package. “Let’s 
see what you’re good for, old boy. Come on, now, get 
busy.” Gerald clawed at the wrappings, rolled it over, 
hit at it, picked it up again to hug to himself, and 
looked at his parents with blue-eyed solemnity. 

“Come on, now,” Herb insisted. “Open it up. If 
you can’t do that on your first birthday you don’t deserve 
what’s in it.” 

“Oh, Herb,” Arlie protested as she set the table, “open 
it for him yourself. He’s too little.” 

[219] 


“Bosh! Open it up, boy.” Gerald blinked. “Open 
it, I tell you. Tear the paper. Show some life, can’t 
you?” Gerald’s lower lip quivered and drew in. “Open 
it!” Herb shouted. “Don’t be a crybaby!” The lips 
parted with a gasping indrawal of breath and the infant 
red of the mouth exposed itself in a wide tense silence 
becoming tenser, until with the fullness of power re¬ 
strained Gerald let go utterly in a nerve-shaking bellow, 
and his little form collapsed in a white huddle. The 
package rolled away. 

“There, now you’ve done it!” Arlie rushed to Gerald 
with belligerent tenderness. “Scared him to death, poor 
little fellow. Of course he can’t open it. On his birth¬ 
day, too.” 

“Well, it was just some stuff I got for his birthday. 
How’d I know he was going to act that way? He opens 
things he shouldn’t quick enough. Come on, old boy, 
buck up. See what’s in the darned old thing. Daddy 
didn’t mean to scare you. Look: a big red ball, and a 
rattle, and a thing-um-jig, and a monkey that climbs a 
string.” Herb demonstrated the agility with which a 
red and green monkey hunched himself up a string, and 
Gerald’s sobs stopped as if the circuit had been broken. 

“I didn’t mean to scare him, Arlie, honest I didn’t,” 
Herb explained as they ate. “I just thought it was time 
for him to begin to do a few things for himself.” 

“Oh well, it doesn’t matter. He’s all right now.” 

When ti'me for dessert came Arlie reappeared from the 
kitchen. She bore a cake with a single pink candle in its 
centre shaking a minute gold petal of flame variously re¬ 
flected from the white frosting. Gerald reached for the • 
flame, its light like a desire in his eyes. 

“See, he likes it! Oh, look quick!” Gerald had 
reached for the flame, felt its heat, withdrawn his hand, 
and was looking up, chubbily puzzled. “Isn’t he funny? 
Now, baby, blow it out. Pooh! Mother’ll do it for you. 

[220] 


There. Now you get the first piece, a great big little 
one!” 

As they ate? the cake and preserved peaches Herb’s 
face sobered. 

“Gee!” he said, “I didn’t remember to get you any¬ 
thing. Do you mind if I don’t till tomorrow?” 

“Oh, I don’t want anything,” Arlie answered. “I got 
enough with you and the baby and all. And it’s spring 
and we got the Ford and can’t we be taking some long 
old rides again, like we used to?” 

“Sure. Only I’d ought to remembered about more’n 
Gerald’s presents. Funny I’d forget the other.” 

The doorbell rang. 

“You go,” she said, “and I’ll whisk some of these 
things off.” 

Herb returned with Mrs. Wentling, Gracia’s mother. 
“I just thought I’d run over to see how you young folks 
was getting along, and I wanted to ask Mrs. Shuman if 
she couldn’t help us out on the church supper a little. A 
cake maybe. I’ve heard you make such good cakes, and 
there’s a birthday cake right now ... for the baby. 
My goodness, are you a whole year old, Gerald? Such 
a big boy too. Thanks, I will have a piece, though I 
just eat. . . . That’s awfully good cake, Mrs. Shuman. 
You just got to make cakes for the supper.” 

Mrs. Wentling’s mouth closed decisively on another 
large bite and her double chin under her smooth cheeks 
waggled a little as she munched. Her brown eyes com¬ 
mented at large upon the room and its furniture. 

“I’d be glad to make a cake if mine would be good 
enough. I do have fair luck with cakes usually.” 

“I’d think so, making ’em like this. Gerald, you’re 
sure a lucky boy to have a mother to make birthday 
cakes as good as this one. My, it’s such a fine thing to 
begin early to have a family. Look at the Weavers. 
Not a chick. Just plain cowardice, I call it. And then 

[ 221 ] 


look at you folks. Here you got this fine boy and ain’t 
been married over two or three years likely. Just how 
long have you been married, anyway?” She paused. 

Herb looked at Arlie and Arlie looked at the table. 
“It’ll be a year the fifteenth of July,” she said. “Two 
years, I mean.” She laughed. “How foolish of me. 
Of course it’s two years, you know.” 

Herb said nothing, Arlie said no more, and Mrs. 
Wentling paused. Her eyes were indrawn as she cal¬ 
culated, almost audibly. “Anyway,” she resumed, in the 
light of her subtractions, “you didn’t wait long and that’s 
right. . . . Gracious, Mrs. Shuman, I didn’t mean to 
shock you. I thought you young folks was so frank 
about everything. It gets different, you know, with mar¬ 
ried people, especially as they get older. As I said to 
Edward . . .” 

In ten minutes she was at the door, where she volubly 
persisted. “All right, Mrs. Shuman, I’ll put you down 
on my list for two white cakes. It’s so good of you, 
you know, to help out that way; and do run over. I 
get so lonesome sometimes.” 

Arlie closed the door. Herb, sunk in his chair, was* 
smoking. Neither spoke for a minute. Then: 

“Oh, Herb, do you suppose she does know, that every¬ 
body does ?” 

“How can I tell ?” 

“It’s too much, when everything was so happy and all.” 

“Let’er know, damn her. I’m going to be cashier here 
in a year. Some of ’em’ll be decent then.” 

“That won’t prevent their knowing. And those you 
think you won’t give money to will just talk all the worse. 
You won’t see things.” 

“Oh hell, shut up!” 

“Don’t, don’t! I got to have you to love me. I can’t 
get along without you.” She sat on the arm of his chair. 
“What could I do without you, Herb? Don’t you see?” 

[222] 


She dropped herself across his lap and clung to his neck. 

“Get off, you’re too heavy.” 

“I’m not. You’re just mad. Love me a little, Herb. 
. . . I love you so.” His arms came around her and 
he kissed her. “I do you, Arlie.” The embrace, her 
warm weight, the pressure of her breast, were incanta¬ 
tions that stirred an answer. The ancient sting of tears 
hinted itself upon his eyes. He closed them and pressed 
her closer. “It’s all right, old girl, we’ll come through. 
You’ll lord it over the whole damn’ lot of Wentlings. 
Money talks better’n they do, and believe me, I’m going 
to have it. We’ll be in Chicago in a year.” 

Shortly she raised herself and started clearing the 
table. “Would you help me with the dishes tonight?” 
she asked. “I haven’t asked you for a long time, and 
I’m tired.” 

“Sure I’ll help you.” 

The dishwashing was a process Arlie observed from a 
distance and through a distorting medium, as if not only 
her hands but every manipulation were performed in 
alien space, strangely close. 

“There, that’s all, Herb. Put the plates away and I’ll 
tend to the rest. Thanks a lot, dear.” The kitchen rit¬ 
ual. 

In an hour they went to bed, and off and on all night 
Gerald cried. “It must be the cake; he really shouldn’t 
have had any,” Arlie thought as she gave him catnip and 
fennel. 

“Can I do anything? What’s the matter with him?” 
Herb blinked at her with a face colored sullenly with 
hard sleep. 

“No, you can’t do anything except go to sleep and not 
wake him. He’s off now, I think.” 

Men could be very useless at times. 


[223] 


CHAPTER XV 


THE TURN OF THE WHEEL 

I 

Summer brought long evenings on the screened porch, 
rides in the Ford, and talk of a trip to Des Moines in 
the latter part of August. After the state fair they 
planned a week at the farm for the remainder of Herb’s 
vacation. It was to be a good summer; it was already 
beginning to be good. The weeks after Mrs. Wentling’s 
visit had brought no more cross-questioning, and the only 
after-effect was a lingering irritability that made Herb 
sullen on occasion; but when their acquaintances quite 
evidently wanted to become friends, their doubts, with¬ 
out being answered, tended to disappear. 

It had been the Weavers who suggested the picnic for 
Saturday afternoon. Arlie was beginning to like Mrs. 
Weaver, who for all her hawk-like face and close eyes 
that blinked too much behind her eyeglasses, could still 
remember Gerald’s weight and the number of his teeth, 
and exclaim at the spread-leg waddle that was his inter¬ 
pretation of walking. Mr. Weaver, with his curl of 
nose made too prominent by a slanting forehead and 
undersized chin, she tried to like because Herb found him 
at least companionable. 

Saturday afternoon Arlie drove the Ford to the side 
of the bank and honked. Herb waved from the window 
his intention of “being out in a minute,” but when he 
came there had to be another wait. Arlie had forgotten 
the butter. 


[224] 


‘Til run to the grocery,” she said. “You watch 
Gerald.” 

On her way past Hatcher’s Drug Store she glanced 
over the banked display of hair tonics in the window to 
see, centered in the midst of conflicting planes of window 
glass, of mirror inside and doubling reflections, a known 
figure bent over the soda fountain. The man turned as 
she looked back and she saw his face in a soft shock of 
familiarity. She knew that face well, but could not place 
it. The man’s brows lifted in an arc of recognition, he 
smiled broadly and bowed into the intervening brick wall 
that closed her view. It was, it must be, some one from 
Coon Falls, but who? Streets, faces, and buildings of 
Coon Falls pressed forward, whirled, went out, charged 
again, as if to overwhelm and prevent her seeing that 
face in one sure setting. 

“Yes, I want some . . . what was it, now?” she had 
to say to the grocery clerk. “I knew, just a minute ago,” 
she apologized. “Just let me think.” 

That face she had seen often—had it been one coming 
to the Bijou? A stream of faces: fat, tall, dark, 
wrinkled, rouged, bland. . . . 

“Was it potatoes, vegetables, cheese?” 

“Butter! That’s it, of course. How could I forget? 
A pound, please.” 

“Yes ma’am, and anything else?” 

“No.” It had been about the Bijou, that face, a 
grimacing part of those long months that were gone. 
She had wanted—passionately wanted—no one from 
Coon Falls to come to Finley. Was this person moving 
here, bringing his family? That would be the end of 
everything, almost. 

“Thank you.” She walked out with the carton of 
butter. She would whisk past the drug store to the 
Ford. Eyes on the ground she hurried. 

“If it isn’t Miss Gelston!” She had to look at the 

[225] 


hand thrust before her and follow the arm up to the face 
—Somers. 

“Why Mr. Somers, how are you?” 

“Fine, and how’s yourself? I guess it isn’t Miss Gel- 
ston any more, is it, or even Arlie? Mrs. Sherman, eh, 
isn’t it?’’ 

“No; Mrs. Shuman. My husband’s in the bank here, 
assistant cashier.” 

“Oh—is he?” The brows rose again, and again came 
the smile. “Well, well, you’re going up in the world a 
bit.” 

“Oh, I don’t know”—coldly. “But how do you hap¬ 
pen to be in Finley? Are you moving here, bringing 
your family?” 

“Oh no, no. Just looking for a location. I thought 
of starting a show-shop here, but it’s no go. You got 
a fairly live fellow here now, and he won’t sell and the 
town won’t stand two.” 

“No, I don’t suppose so. ... I hope you find a good 
place. I know this wouldn’t suit you. Good-bye, I got 
to hurry on. Mr. Shuman’s waiting. I—I’m glad I 
saw you.” 

“Good-bye, Mrs. Shuman.” Again the broad warm 
hand came out, and again the eyes gleamed under the ver¬ 
satile brows. “I’m mighty glad to see you again.” 

“Good-bye, good-bye.” She was off now. “And re¬ 
member me to Jessie. I hope she’s all right now.” 

She thought that Somers started to speak, but did not 
stop to hear what he might be saying. 

2 

“Who was that guy you had to shake hands with so 
much?” Herb asked. 

“I didn’t shake hands more’n I had to. When a man 
puts out his hand that way what you going to do?” 

[226] 


“Well, who was he then?” 

“It was Somers, from Coon Falls. I used to work 
for him in the Bijou. He’s looking- for another house. 
Old Tritchler’s probably tired of having him sponge 
around.” 

“Is Tritchler the guy you told father you’d come to 
Lawson to do some' business for?” 

“Yes. . . . Did your father tell you?” 

“Sure. Quite a yarn, he thought it was.” 

“Oh ! Didn’t he believe it ?” 

Herb smiled. “Well, I guess you got sorta mixed, 
didn’t you?” 

“I don’t see why I should of. He told you, though?” 

“Yep.” 

It hurt to have suspicions confirmed, even though she 
felt that Herb was using this to punish her for meeting 
Somers and thus reviving the old anxiety. But the con¬ 
soling margin of uncertainty about her first encounter 
with Mr. Shuman had vanished. It had been a year and 
a half or more, and here she was, married to the son 
of the man who had not been fooled. Yet it hurt. 

“Is this nut going to stay here?” 

“No. He thinks Finley’s too small for two shows.” 

“I’d think so!” 

“He’s a good showman, though, Somers is.” She felt 
agreeably technical. 

“Yes. I gathered that you thought he was.” 

“Oh, don’t, Herb. Here come the Weavers. Let’s not 
fight before them.” 

Because Gerald was already asleep Mr. and Mrs. 
Weaver got into the back seat together. It was better 
so, in a way, for Arlie did not need to talk as much as if 
she had been with Mrs. Weaver. For the first miles Mr. 
Weaver was busy shouting to Herb a long, laughter- 
punctuated account of how he had induced a farmer, one 
Jorgenson, to insure his life for five thousand dollars. 

[227] 


I 


He was feeling very good about it. Arlie was glad he 
had succeeded: she didn’t have to talk, and could give 
monosyllabic replies to the housekeeping questions Mrs. 
Weaver tried to ask. 

The equable golden afternoon was enough, the scurry 
under the trees along the river, the darting along the 
green-millioned cornfields, the view from a hill road of 
the level horizon-filling cloverfields, flat, distant and 
ethereal as a mirage, a sheen of placid sea, lavendered by 
distance, flowing around dusky green islands of trees. 
A turn, a dip, a rise and prodigious rattle across a gaunt 
iron bridge, the river green as ripe olive and somnolently 
smooth between its black banks. More trees, and among 
them a white forlorn farmhouse. ... If Somers could 
come to Finley, Mrs. Holcomb could, or Ray Jarvis, or 
Amy Le Vitre, or Mrs. Nolte. There was no law against 
it. Her happiness depended on the sheer chance that no 
one from Finley went to Coon Falls, or from Coon Falls 
to Finley. It was good to hold Gerald when she had 
worries; his substantiality quieted and innerved. Per¬ 
haps she should have said something to Somers— 
“You’re my friend, I know. I’m happy here. And 
you won’t talk?” Though that didn’t sound right. 
“Please, Mr. Somers, you won’t let Finley know what 
Coon Falls does, will you?” No—that was too stiff. 
How open would one have to be with a man like Somers ? 
He had always liked her when she had been in the Bijou, 
and he was pleasant, big-hearted, clever. 

“Well, what you thinking about?” Herb’s voice 
rasped. 

“Nothing . . . why?” 

Then Weaver had stopped talking, her tardy mind in¬ 
formed her, and no one had been saying anything; ex¬ 
cept an inane question from Mrs. Weaver to her hus¬ 
band ; and under cover of that, Herb: “I’ll bet vou’re 

[228] 


thinking of that Somers. Pretty nice bird all right, isn’t 
he?” 

Still trying to hurt her. “I’m not—not at all. Can’t 
I just be quiet? I’ll tell you later what it is.” She added 
a “Sh” and Herb lowered his voice to say: “Huh. 
What would it mean, your meeting this guy and not hav¬ 
ing a word for any of us?” 

“Let’s don’t. Gerald’s waking up, see.” 

Another mile brought them across a bridge to Scud- 
der’s Bluff. Silence oppressed them all as they took 
themselves and their baskets from the car, a silence that 
let Arlie perceive the Weavers knew something was 
wrong. Then Mrs. Weaver began with a rush: talk, ac¬ 
tion might bring them to the careless hilarity of a picnic. 
“Now Marshall, you and Mr. Shuman get some firewood 
while Mrs. Shuman and I get the other things ready. 
Come on, Gerald. And let’s not call each other ‘Mrs.’ 
any more. It’s so formal. My name’s Josephine, but 
usually it’s Joe.” 

There was a flurry of companionship as they began to 
broil their pieces of steak over the fire, but the fire was hot 
and the sticks too short. Their faces were numb with heat 
by the time the steak was done. They ate silently, and eyed 
the diminishing supply of iced tea in the too small pail. 
Arlie prepared a little speech on stinginess for later de¬ 
livery to Herb. She had provided their share with wide 
margins. . . . But Herb was mad and getting madder. 
At least so his continuing silence said to her across the 
twilight as he glanced at her speculatively. Clearly, she 
was in his mind. 

A mysterious sign from Weaver took the men farther 
back into the woods, whence came laughter. 

“You take Gerald, he’s so fussy, and I’ll pick up.” 
It was good of Josephine. Arlie wandered to the edge 
of the bluff with Gerald. Thirty feet below lay water, 

[229] 


placid and without ripple, perfect in its melancholy green. 
Frogs croaked from the dullness of growth beyond that 
merged into an oatfield, a yellow almost obscure now 
that the sun had left only an ineffective rose. What good, 
what good ? Herb wouldn’t believe her about Somers. She 
had been sorry to see him, yet glad in so far as he was 
one who had been kind. Just how should you greet a 
friend? Oh well . . . that was it. Marriage brought 
its tiffs. Her own father and mother. . . . She and 
Herb weren’t like that, at least. No. . . . 

Up through her nostrils a gray tickle of smell . . . 
dead fish; it made the view wrong. The smell became 
the view . . . what there was left of it. A slab of earth 
over emptiness. Stars coming. She was dizzy before 
the huge insubstantiality of the earth. She wanted it to 
become the land it was, a county, Iowa. 

The others were laughing by the Ford. They must be 
ready to go. Gerald had been very good and quiet. She 
picked him up. 

“I think they’ve been drinking a little,” Josephine said 
as she and Gerald neared the car. “Marshall had some 
whiskey.” 

“I don’t care,” Arlie responded. “Maybe Herb’ll feel 
better.” 

“Come on, bub!” Weaver shouted to Gerald. “You 
come with me and your dad in the front seat. We’ll 
show you what life is.” 

“No, I think he’ll want his mother.” 

“Hey, Weaver, you jump down to the river and get a 
pail of water. She’s about dry. I’ll get the cap off. 
The damn’ thing sticks.” 

“Thanks awfully. Where’s the pail?” Weaver stood 
for a moment black against the last light, the pail cut in 
definite silhouette at his side. Then he had gone, drag¬ 
ging with him all remaining brilliance from the sky. 

“Aren’t the stars pretty?” said Josephine. 

[230] 


“Mm-hmm.” 

“This is such a pretty place, too/’ 

“Yes. ... I wish it didn’t smell so.” 

“Hadn’t noticed it. There is a little smell.” 

“Suppose I were alone here with Gerald,” Arlie 
thought, and as she looked at the woods on either side of 
the road, coming closer with night, she shivered and 
walked around the car to be nearer Herb. 

“What’s the matter now?” he snapped 

“Nothing . . . I’m just waiting.” 

“Better get in. ’S where you belong.” 

“Do I ? All right.” 

“Still thinking about Somersville, eh, or whatever his 
name is?” 

“I’m not, and you know it. I just think of you.” 

“Rot. There, I guess that’ll show us the way home.” 
A segment of light shot out from the car, catching 
the upper ironwork of the bridge below and then losing it¬ 
self in the night. “Wish he’d hurry. Go on now, get in. 
Do as I tell you.” 

She did, sitting down in the back seat beside Josephine, 
who was pretending not to have heard. “Is the little 
man asleep?” she asked. 

“No, but he will be before we’ve gone a mile. There’s 
Mr. Weaver now. Hand me a diaper from that basket, 
will you?” 

As they filled the radiator the men generated some joke 
about Weaver’s long absence, and laughing explosively 
slopped the w r ater over the hood. “All right now, we’re 
off.” Herb had gone a step forward into the full light 
of the lamps to make sure of the road. As he turned, his 
face seemed lengthened by the light, his lips indiscernible 
except as a line, his eyes intent and troubled. She wanted 
to reach over the seat when he got in, and hug him. His 
face, somehow ... he needed her, needed what she 
could give. “I . . . I . . . I . . .” sang within her. 

[231] 


“Oh, I love him . . . love him!” and she hugged Gerald 
to her until his squirming made her cease. 

What she was feeling would make Herb right again, 
She would cure him of doubt—that utterly foolish 'doubt. 
It was food to have the power to make him want her, 
and in that way to find their peace. As the car ground 
forward and fell away down the hill she began to chatter. 

“Look out!” Weaver yelled, “there’s a black cat!” 

“What of it ?” 

“Bad luck. Better drive careful.” 

“What rot!” Herb said. 

“I saw some white on it,” Josephine called. “It’s not 
all black.” 

“Sure thing,” Herb agreed. 

“No sir, that was an all-black cat,” Weaver insisted. 

The bridge rumbled into silence behind them, and the 
corn marched into and out of the light that drove the 
darkness. An answering light swung its spoke across 
the dim heavens, brightening with the wind-revealed 
moon, and then wag a low moving visibility lost down 
the crossroad. Presently a drift of golden sand along¬ 
side their own car kept pace and brightened. Then the 
purr of a large car. 

“Some one coming, Herb,” Arlie called. The Ford 
leapt along but the big car swung powerfully past and a 
white hand waved derision. 

“Hell! Can’t race a damn’ Cadillac. Wish I had 
dad’s, I’d show him a thing or two.” 

“Yeh, the poor workman, you know—” Weaver began. 

“Oh, shut up!” 

Arlie wasn’t sure she had caught the words until she 
saw Weaver’s face turned toward Plerb in questioning 
silhouette, as if to estimate the degree of his temper. 

The next corner was taken sharply. 

“There’s that damn’ cat again!” Weaver cried. 
“Didn’t I tell you!” 

[232] 


“Cat, nothing, that’s a rabbit. You blind?” His 
words were propitiatory in tone, even though the meaning 
was not. “Look at his white tail.” 

“Guess you’re right, but look! he’s loony with the light! 
Can’t get out of the road!” 

The little jumping form was keeping to the road, criss¬ 
crossing from side to side but never finding escape, light- 
bound. At times it was only a visible tail, and that only 
a piece of white paper jerked crazily along at incredible 
speed. Then his head would appear as he lunged across 
at the opposite flying wall of light. 

“Watch me get him,” Herb sang out. “Rabbit stew 
for breakfast!” 

“Oh, Mr. Shuman, not so fast!” Josephine cried. 
Mr. Weaver only looked at Herb but said nothing. Ar- 
lie, too, was silent. Herb’s exclamation had seemed 
eager, alive; he would be himself now, especially if he 
got the rabbit, and the rabbit was losing, was only a few 
yards ahead of the car, almost under the light. 

“Hang on!” Herb shouted as the car lurched farther 
ahead. But where was the rabbit in that glare on the 
ground below, a white glare going out and darkness fall¬ 
ing. No, she was falling, into darkness profound as si¬ 
lence and wide as heaven. A wide shudder of darkness, 
and in depths above an agonizing dance. Horrible some¬ 
things at wrestle, with the commotion dying into long rip¬ 
ples on a lake of palpable black, beneath which she lay. 
A thread of white on the shore, growing brighter, a 
glimmering of pain. 

Harshness beneath her cheek, a cutting. Stalks of 
weeds. The corn rustled under the sky, straight and 
ominous, and a light was on the road with an absurd 
bulk and turning wheels before it. The car? Then 
where was Herb? 

Where was Gerald? 

A white lump two yards away must be Gerald. His 

[233] 


size. And she had failed him. In a crisis. Had let 
him fly out of her arms when the car swerved and turned. 
She remembered that now, but she could not remember 
when Gerald had fallen from her. Some one was moan¬ 
ing beyond her as she sat upright. She fell back, she 
would have to crawl to Gerald. Again she crashed into 
the breaking dark, hideous with voices, cries, and lights. 
She would get to him, poor baby, distant from her ap¬ 
pallingly . . . 

Then warm bulking forms drifted across a dream of 
pain, coming closer. Gigantic forms, taller than the 
moon. 

3 

“You must tell me. I can’t stand it. How much is 
he hurt? Why didn’t you bring him in your car with 
me?” 

“You can find out, lady, when we get to town. 
They’ve taken him on in, with the other fellow. He was 
cut up pretty bad though, I can tell you. Groggy like.” 

The strange car began to move along the road and past 
the overturned Ford, where the earth was plowed to fresh 
wounds of blackness. Bits of glass threw at her a broken 
glaze of moonlight, and one outlying last piece gave her 
one clear round image of the moon itself, small as a dol¬ 
lar and of singular brightness. 

“Where’s Mrs. Weaver?” 

“That the other woman?” 

“Yes.” 

“She’s back in another car yet. They wanted to keep 
her quiet. They didn’t want to tell her.” 

“Is Mr. Weaver hurt?” 

“Yeh. Caught right under the steering wheel. Cut 
and mashed up bad. He was dead when we got to him 
I guess. If he hadn’t been such a fool he wouldn’t of 
got a lesson that won’t do him no good now. Your hus- 

[234] 


band is just knocked unconscious. He’ll come round.” 

“My . . . my husband? My husband was driv¬ 
ing. . . .” 

“Your husband ! Hell! I got mixed. I’m sorry, lady.” 

The car increased its speed. Arlie stared unseeingly 
at Gerald, whom she had to hold with one arm. He had 
been crying when they gave him to her and was still 
whimpering. They were skimming down the streets of 
Finley before she saw, by a passing light, the enormous 
bruise upon his forehead. 


[23s] 


CHAPTER XVI 


BACKGROUND 

I 

Plainly there was nothing to do after the funeral. A 
fatigue of pity had mechanized the movements of all. 
Peter Shuman was wearing an invisible path up and down 
the living-room, extending his route, on eccentric turns, 
into the rich darkness of his office-den beyond. Mrs. 
Shuman rocked nervously, saying nothing, and on the 
other side of the table Gloria held a magazine and wanted 
to read. She compromised at turning the pages. 

“I think that would be a good editorial, mother, on 
the European situation. Looks like war to me. Don’t 
you want to look it over?” Gloria held out the mag¬ 
azine until her mother shook her head, reproachfully: 
life must of course go on, but not at once. 

“It might help you to get your mind off things.” 

“No . . . Gloria.” 

“I know how you feel. We all do. But there’s 
nothing to be done.” She turned her head toward a stir 
she had half seen, half felt, in the doorway. “Here’s 
Arlie. ... Is Gerald asleep?” 

Arlie nodded but still hesitated where her blue dress 
blurred into the shadows. Her face and the white sling 
in which she carried a broken arm were alone vivid. 
Mr. Shuman emerged from his office and swung a chair 
around. “You’ll find this one comfortable,” he said in 
a low tone, a hushed projection of an earlier hour. 

[236] 


Without reply she sat down, and Mrs. Shuman went to 
the window, where through parted curtains she looked 
out at the night-filled land. Mr. Shuman sat down by 
Arlie, and she turned to him suddenly: it had been as if 
she had caught a voiceless preliminary of speech. He 
returned her glance helplessly, caught wanting in some 
responsibility he acknowledged. 

Gloria struck across their feebly magnetic field: “You 
look feverish, Arlie. Your color’s so high. Are you?” 

“I don’t think so.” Her voice sounded dryly remote. 
With her free hand she drew the hair from her fore¬ 
head, letting the light fall on its paler height, and showing 
the true length of her face. 

“Heavens, don’t do that, it makes you look so old,” 
Gloria laughed, and checked herself. 

Mrs. Shuman returned to her chair. “I think we’d 
better go to bed early tonight, all of us,” she said. 
“There’s no object in staying up.” 

“I’m ready any time,” said Arlie. “I just came down 
because you were all here.” 

“Yes, yes . . . surely,” Mr. Shuman put in. 

“If you’ll help me with my clothes again, Gloria.” 

“Of course.” 

“I suppose it’s settled, then,”—Mrs. Shuman seemed to 
be concluding a long debate—“that none of us will wear 
mourning.” 

“If you think best, mother,” Gloria murmured. 

“I know that Herbert wouldn’t want us to. He always 
laughed at it.” 

When had he said that? Arlie could not remember. 
It must have' been before she knew him. 

“Our sorrow,” Mrs. Shuman went on, “needn’t be 
worn on our sleeve. It will be inside, and worn there al¬ 
ways. At least for me.” Her lips thinned until Herb 
seemed to be modelling himself out of her face. Arlie 
watched, transfixed. 


[237] 


“Yes, mother,” Gloria was saying. 

Mr. Shuman was pacing the room again, fingering his 
heavy watch chain, from which, as he passed the lamp, 
the light gleamed in minute brilliance. Then Arlie bent 
her head to stare with the other women, stupidly, at the 
angular gold patterns in the dark rug. 

A long hot hour ticked itself away on dull ratchets of 
talk before they went to bed. 

2 

As she settled herself for the hot night under a single 
sheet Arlie reflected that tomorrow would be easier. It 
was all done now, all the hard first part. The arrival 
of Herb’s parents at five o’clock the morning after the 
accident had meant everything. They had taken com¬ 
plete charge. Mrs. Shuman had given directions to the 
women about packing the linen and clothes and had then 
brought Arlie and Gerald on to Lawson; Mr. Shuman 
had staid to accompany the body on Monday, and he was 
to see about having the furniture crated, about the lease 
on the house—all those things. 

Gerald was better, and the doctor had said he would 
come through without a scar. Her arm would be healed 
in six weeks. 

Nothing remained—but living. Living without Herb. 

He was alone now, in the cemetery, a bleak one where 
the grass was already scorched, and the withered stems 
of Decoration Day flowers lay brown on different graves. 
Next year she would be putting some on Herb’s. She 
would be tall and straight. Maybe she would wear 
mourning anyway . . . carry a handkerchief, yet not cry. 
A silent grief, to be borne preciously through all her 
life. Gerald would grow up to be like Herb; he would 
question her about his father, even when she was old. 
Some day she would tell him everything. Even then, 

[238] 


when she would be sixty, maybe, Herb would still be 
young and straight and slim . . . and level under the 
earth, his head by the roots of the evergreen. Young 
always, that was something. . . . Later, when she died 
too—suddenly heaven was remote and dim as a story 
read aloud when one hasn’t listened. A blank wave of 
time—and time forgotten. Heaven unreal. Had it ever 
been real? Even when she had been converted? . . . 
Time slipping, leaving no mark. Gerald breathes. 
Asleep now. 

Herb had taken only one swallow of whiskey, Mr. 
Weaver had said. Mr. Shuman himself had seen the 
flask, almost full. People had spread the story he had 
been drinking heavily. Mrs. Wentling, Gracia’s mother, 
had let her know about that. But it hadn’t been the 
whiskey . . . Somers. . . . She wouldn’t have to tell 
anybody. Couldn’t tell anybody. 

What was it Mr. Shuman had said about talking to the 
coroner and that everything was all right? And Mrs. 
Weaver, crying so. If anybody cried the wife should, 
and she hadn’t. Wouldn’t. Not yet. Mr. Weaver with 
his bumps and sprained ankle. ... If the Weavers 
hadn’t proposed that trip, or if she had remembered the 
butter, if the cat hadn’t crossed the road. The rabbit 
might have bolted out of sight, might have ... or 
Somers might have come a day later. If only she hadn’t 
known Somers at all, or ever worked at the Bijou, or 
known Herb . . . especially if she hadn’t had Gerald 
... if she’d just staid mad at Ned Rickenberg that time 
when he and Jake had gone to the train with those 
girls. . . . But it was all together. Nothing could be 
undone now. 

She twisted her head to look out at the cornfields, dim 
under the moonlight. Frogs croaked somewhere. They 
kept at it and at it and at it, like some one winding 
a big cheap watch. 


[239] 



Where was that rabbit now? 

“O Herb!” That fresh earth was piled in such a 
weight. She and Gerald in the room alone. “Herb, 
Herb, come back, oh, come back, we’re going to need you 
so!” 

Only the light swish of curtains, walls, chairs; and the 
room as if some one had whispered a few minutes ago. 

3 

“If you’ll just come in with me, Arlie,” Mr. Shuman 
said a few mornings later when they had all drifted into 
the living-room after breakfast. He threw back the door 
of his office and waited for her to pass in. “There are 
some things we need to go over together, and we might 
as well do it now.” 

Despite her many weeks in the house Arlie had never 
more than glanced into this room before. By the great 
oak desk stood a tall letter file; a typewriter sat on a 
swinging arm. Taking the large leather easy-chair by 
the window she snapped the reading-light by its side on 
and off as she waited for him to begin. 

He tapped the green blotter with a paper knife. “Yes, 
there are several things we must fix up, so that you’ll 
know where you are.” 

“I want to,” she replied. 

“First there’s the bank stock. Two thousand at par. 
Probably worth three. It’ll average ten per cent any¬ 
way. Last year it paid sixteen. That’ll make you an 
income of two to three hundred a year. . . . And the 
Ford’s yours, of course. If you want to sell it I’ll buy 
it at this year’s price. I need another one, really, for 
the hired men.” 

“All right.” 

“That money, plus the three hundred, about, that Her¬ 
bert had in the bank—and you had some money in your 

[240] 


own account—but with all of it invested, even at eight 
per cent, vou can’t live on that.” 

“No sir'.” 

“So there’ll have to be some other provision for the 
present. I’ve thought of an allowance, such as I give 
Gloria. I’d thought we might start that at about one 
hundred a month, or maybe more. That would give 
you an income of around fourteen or fifteen hundred 
dollars.” 

“That’s awfully good of you.” 

“Not at all . . . not at all. It’s just getting the right 
thing settled.” 

“But it is good of you. I don’t know what call I 
have to expect anything. If my brother died I don’t 
think my family would expect to give his wife an allow¬ 
ance. She’d go back to her own people, or get a job, or 
something. Of course, they couldn’t give her an 

allowance.” 

“I know ... I know . . . but this is different. I’d 

planned to work Herb in on some deals that would have 

given him as much of an income as this anyway; and to 
buy more stock for him when Burr left. I just didn’t 
do it soon enough. There didn’t seem to be any hurry 
and I was waiting a little. You see, all that Mrs. Shu¬ 
man and I have would eventually have gone to Herbert 
and Gloria anyway, and now Gerald will come in for 
Herbert’s share at our death, so that his future is 

settled.” 

His face was hot. All this was an effort he didn’t 
want to make. His eyes drooped a little, his voice 
drooped. Heat from the fields drove in at the open 
window. 

“Of course,” he was adding, “Mrs. Shuman and I ex¬ 
pect to educate Gerald . . . send him to Ames, Iowa 
City, Harvard, anywhere he wants to go. You won’t 
have to worry about that. . . . The allowance will start 

[241] 


now. ... Of course there’s this about it. . . . In case, 
you know, that you should, should ever marry again, the 
allowance to you would stop, I suppose.” 

“Oh yes, Mr. Shuman, but I won’t. I couldn’t, you 
see. Not after Herb.” 

“Well, I don’t expect you will, my girl, but years 
change one. You can never tell. It will be your own 
life you’ll lead, not ours. We ... we want you here 
. . . long as you’ll stay. And Gerald. It will be quiet 
here, but life will be comfortable. Things’ll jog along, 
somehow.” He rose. 

Arlie wanted to say something more but could not. 
On the porch, she could see that Mrs. Shuman was wait¬ 
ing for her with a bit of sewing in her lap. 

4 

Arlie settled herself in a wicker rocker, trying to take 
in what the new situation would mean. It was too 
much: a freedom that she hadn’t wanted; more money, 
probably, than her father was making; and Gerald pro¬ 
vided for. 

“I suppose,” Mrs. Shuman began, “that your father- 
in-law made clear, too, what we intend to do for Gerald?” 

It was as if she had been listening. 

“Besides his education I’m going to take over the prob¬ 
lem of his clothes. I’ll clothe him always.” 

“You don’t need to do that. I’ll have money enough.” 

“No, that money is for you alone. You shouldn’t have 
to depend on it for Gerald. Hell come into far more of 
an income than that, some day. No . . . you’re not go¬ 
ing to suffer financially because of Herbert’s going. 
And if you do ever marry again, why, we’d be—” 

“But I’m not going to marry again.” 

“No, so you think now, and of course it would be nicer 
if you didn’t, for Gerald I mean. You see how . . . 

[242] 


Yet it’s your own life you’ll be leading, and we can’t ex¬ 
pect ... we can’t expect you to be bound to us always 
if you’re able to find happiness elsewhere. . . . You un¬ 
derstand, Arlie, I don’t say you will, but if you do, and it 
would be easier for you without Gerald, why we could 
get the papers made out in half an hour and adopt him.” 

“Adopt him? . . . Your own grandson?” 

“Oh yes, that’s often done. We love Gerald, you see, 
as if he were ours. He is, in a sense. And with Gloria 
gone he’d be such a comfort to us. Some one to love, 
and to have love us.” 

“But I’d never give Gerald up, Mrs. Shuman. Why, 
he’s mine, my baby. Not if I did marry I wouldn’t give 
him up. But I’m not going to marry again. How 
could I?” 

“I don’t say you will. It’s just in case you ever do 
I want you to know how it would be with us, and about 
Gerald.” She was winking back the tears. Blindly she 
gathered her sewing into a bundle, preparatory to rising. 
A lump came in Arlie’s own throat; she put out a hand. 
Mrs. Shuman patted it perfunctorily as she went. 

It had been no human touch. Their bloods had not 
pulsed together. There was so much to think about, now 
that she was left alone. Only slowly did the idea develop 
that something had been askew. 

5 

Quite evidently they had talked things over. Mrs. 
Shuman had known everything her husband was to say, 
and what he would forget—Gerald’s clothes. What 
plan was behind their talk? What had they to gain or 
to lose when they had already lost Herbert? They had 
gained Gerald, for a while. . . . 

She gave it up and walked through the grove to the 
hired men’s house to talk with Mrs. Gardewine, who with 

[243] 


her husband now had charge there; Marie, a Bohemian 
girl, having taken her place in the "‘big” house. Arlie 
liked to talk with Mrs. Gardewine. There might be 
things in her mind she didn’t speak, but there were few 
things about yourself, you felt, that she didn’t say. The 
more you read, the more “cultured” you were, the more 
you thought about people in the back of your mind, even 
while you talked with them. Mrs. Gardewine was a 
relief. 

6 

While her arm was mending Arlie returned to her 
reading, wondering as she did so that her mother-in-law 
seemed not even to notice a result she had earlier worked 
so hard to achieve. She found Hardy, beginning with 
A Pair of Blue Eyes, and taking in turn The Return of 
the Native, The Mayor of Casterhridge, Far from the 
Madding Crowd, and Tess of the D’Urbervilles. She 
told herself that she liked best Far from the Madding 
Crozvd, but it was Henchard on the road with his canary 
in the cage that in her dreams was real. In one poison¬ 
ous dream she stumbled down the road after him calling 
to his heedless ears, but could no more make him hear 
than she could insert herself into the invulnerable solidity 
of the book. 

Then the outbreak of war in Europe absorbed her 
hours, and throughout August she followed the German 
progress through Liege, Namur. Gloria at first inclined 
to be pro-German, but weakened under her mother’s tears 
for Belgium. Mr. Shuman, at first conscious of his Ger¬ 
man father, only read the papers, said little, and tried to 
hide his opinions behind the President’s proclamation of 
neutrality. 

Arlie saw the war only as interesting news. When she 
argued at all she upheld the Allies, and then picked up 
the paper to find her satisfaction fed with another Teu- 

[244] 


tonic advance. Simply, she was loyal to power, and the 
destructive brilliance of its drive across life generated a 
harsh glow that reached cleansingly to "the fundamental 
in her. The more dreadful the news the more peaceful 
her day. At night she would again announce herself pro- 
Ally, and wake to read avidly of a defeat. It was not 
to be so later. 

One morning when Mrs. Shuman abruptly turned the 
talk from books and war Arlie felt rebuffed. Very 
well, she would not read, and all afternoon she did not 
turn a page. But she felt deprived and worried, and 
that night she read until two o’clock, when Constance and 
Sophia Baines were locked in their graves. Then The 
Scarlet Letter drew her across its opening pages again— 
she had begun it in high school—and on until she came 
to the woodland scene where a light graciously lacking 
good and evil shone about Hester and Arthur in a world 
of their own creation, all persons forgot. Golden seren¬ 
ity of sunlight, and the musk of a living world. . . . 
Through the succeeding pages her mood broke and ran 
discordantly into the wild and black distortions, lit by re¬ 
flection of deep fires ... a persistent disharmony that 
kept its ominous notes thrumming. . . . She plucked The 
Grandissimes from the shadiest corner of the book¬ 
shelves. 


7 

More and more the care of Gerald had been taken from 
her. Gloria bathed him, dressed him, undressed him, 
and Mrs. Shuman was already planning his fall and win¬ 
ter wardrobe. Arlie looked on. No questions were re¬ 
ferred to her, mother and daughter decided everything. 
Perhaps that was their right, Arlie reflected, since Mrs. 
Shuman was paying the bills. Nevertheless . . . 

Gerald’s bruise had almost healed by that time. He 
would go just as often to Gloria or his grandmother as 

[245] 


to Arlie. That might be different when her arm allowed 
her to take him again and to cuddle him safely. For the 
present she tried to accept his new distance, and tried 
once to think of him as another’s child. It would have 
been easier so. Yet he persisted in being hers so much 
that every defection hurt. 

“He must have every advantage,” Mrs. Shuman re¬ 
iterated one afternoon. 

“I know. I’m reading lots now. I hope I can know 
a good deal by the time he’s old enough to make it 
count.” 

“Mm-hmm, yes, you should. But background, you 
know, background. . . .” She was fond of the word. 

“Won’t that be background?” 

“Oh yes . . . but we must all help. Herbert would 
have meant so much to the poor little man. We must do 
everything in our power.” 

Arlie left the room blindly, knowing for the first time 
that she actively disliked the Shumans. “I’ll never, 
never give them Gerald,” she told herself. 

8 

Toward the first of September Gloria’s fiance came for 
a week-end. At dinner Arlie watched him carefully, not¬ 
ing his high bald forehead with its peninsula of hair 
showing the striations of the brush. His blue eyes held 
at times a meekness that for a moment projected affabil¬ 
ity and then timidly shifted, as if for all his big body’s 
assurance he was not quite sure of any one about him. 
Then gathering himself he dominated all. They talked at 
first in a distant echo of the day of the funeral, as if Mr. 
Whittaker’s visit precipitated anew the dispersing mists. 
But midway through the meal Gloria began on dances, 
outwitted chaperones, canoe trips up the river. Mr. 
Shuman smiled his inability to handle such topics, and his 

[246] 


wife ate silently and disapprovingly, as if to intimate that 
such talk, though well enough on another day, was at 
present out of place. 

Shortly Arlie felt the duty of conversation. To point 
that duty Mr. Whittaker turned to her with a smile and 
a question about Gerald. 

“Oh yes, much better. He’s been all right for some 
time. He . . .” She could say no more, though the si¬ 
lence hung before her as a golden space. She could not 
use it, found no word to drop into it. Only a throaty 
murmur. All was gray. 

“Yes, you must see Gerald, Arch. I’ve been givirg 
him his bath regularly up till this morning.” 

She might say something* about her arm’s preventing 
her; say a word of praise for Gloria. Her face was 
frozen, her tongue uncertain. 

Later she and Mr. Whittaker were alone by the library 
table for a few minutes. “Who’s been reading Jack 
London?” he asked, taking Martin Eden from the table. 

“I have,” she said. “It’s a peculiar book, isn’t it? 
All that awful work. I don’t believe a man could do it, 
do you?” 

“The laundry work would have been excellent training 
if his wife washed at home.” 

“Does he marry? I haven’t finished it yet.” 

“I don’t recall. It’s a case of almost, I believe. 
Drowns himself instead, or something like that. But I 
shouldn’t spoil it for you. I’m afraid I have.” 

“I don’t care so much about the end any more,” she 
answered. 

They were still discussing plots when Mrs. Shuman 
rustled in and Gloria returned from upstairs, where she 
had put Gerald to bed, a task she had let her mother per¬ 
form for the last week. 

Immediately the silence widened. Mrs. Shuman would 
think they had had nothing to say, when all the time . . . 

[247] 


After a little she and her mother-in-law went upstairs. 
*Tm afraid you’re tired tonight, Arlie. You haven’t had 
much to say.” 

“Do I ever?” 

“But we must try to make this visit pleasant for 
Archer. Just a few words now and then, anyway, so 
that you’ll count, you know.” 

“But, I did talk to him. While you were all gone I 
did. About books.” 

“Oh, did you? I’m so glad. Gloria will be pleased.” 
She bent over to give a good-night kiss. The look that 
accompanied it commingled admonition and a distant ap¬ 
proval, but within the look Arlie saw a sharpness that 
made her open her own door quickly. Just what it meant 
•she could not have said. 


9 

V T wish you had been able to keep up your conversa¬ 
tion about books with Archer,” Mrs. Shuman said as 
they sat on the porch the morning after Mr. Whittaker’s 
■departure. 

Arlie temporized by throwing a doll to Gerald, who, 
after a fall, was considering tears. “See the nice dolly, 
^Gerald. He wants to play with you.” 

“I’m afraid,” Mrs. Shuman persisted, “that he’ll think 
you don’t like him, or won’t recognize your . . . abilities. 
He told Gloria he found it hard to talk with you.” 

“Oh, did he?” But it was true. When he had later 
tried various topics she had sat dumb. Now she wanted 
to accuse him of disloyalty to the little community of in¬ 
terest that had begun to form that first evening. “Oh, 
did he?” Her words trembled to so faint an echo she 
was not sure she had said them, but Mrs. Shuman was 
■answering the question with a nod and a “Yes.” 

“It’s just that we want every one in the family to be 

[248] 


friendly, and Archer soon will be in the family. By a 
year from now, anyway.” 

“They’ll make a splendid couple, won’t they?” said 
Arlie. 

“Yes . . . they will. I’m glad you see it. His fam¬ 
ily is very choice. Judge Whittaker, you know. Archer 
went into his father’s law office in June. There’s not a 
better family in Iowa. It makes me very glad at times. 
I’ve always believed in developing the best we have by 
such marriages. We’ll have something in time. . . . 
There are lots of good things about England. The war 
brings them out. And here in Iowa—” 

“We’ll have first hogs and then people, you mean?” 

Mrs. Shuman’s face contracted. “No,” she said, “I 
do not mean ‘first hogs and then people.’ But what do 
you mean?” 

“Nothing, I suppose.” 

“I meant,” Mrs. Shuman said, “that if the best families 
in Iowa intermarry that we’ll build up, well, yes, some¬ 
thing like they have in England. Only of course this is 
a democracy. We’ll have a democratic aristocracy. 
But we must not permit any marriages that—Gerald * 
what are you doing?” 

Gerald looked up innocently from the corner where he 
had set a potted fern on the floor and was carefully 
plucking the fronds. 

“Oh, how bad you are!” Arlie sprang for him. 
“You’ve spoiled the fern. I feel like slapping you!” 

“No. The fern doesn’t matter. Don’t punish him.” 

When the mess had been cleaned up Arlie waited for 
her mother-in-law to continue. She had to remind her 
at last: “You were talking about Iowa families.” 

“Oh yes, but I’d said all I intended, I guess. I must 
see how Marie is getting along.” 

Arlie completed the thought:. “We must prevent sucli 
marriages as that of Herbert with you. Gloria’s helps to 

[ 249 ] 


balance things.” She wondered if Gloria or any one had 
ever told Whittaker about Gerald. Perhaps she could 
find out, but she doubted that Gloria could be open 
enough to discuss such things. And why had Gerald at¬ 
tacked the fern at the one moment when his grandmother 
was about to say more than she intended? 

Mrs. Shuman returned to her chair. ‘‘For instance, 
Arlie—” Arlie breathed more quickly; perhaps she was to 
find out after all. “For instance, if you should ever 
marry again Fd want you to marry into as good a family 
as possible. You’re pretty, you’re bright, and while your 
family isn’t exactly what I’d call well-to-do, still they’re 
above the average—” 

“No, I don’t think they are.” 

“Oh yes, they are too. Your father must have had 
great possibilities once.” 

Had Herb told his mother of her romancings about her 
father, and had she believed them? Or did she believe 
them only when belief might extricate her from an unin¬ 
tended situation? “Your father was sick, wasn’t he, 
when he was younger, and didn’t that hold him back?” 

“I guess so,’’ Arlie answered weakly. 

“Well, as I was saying, if you ever should marry again 
you ought to marry as well as you can. But on the other 
hand—that isn’t our car, is it? I thought it was for a 
minute. On the other hand, I don’t think you ought to 
let the other person’s lack of family stand in the way of 
your happiness. We have to be reasonable in this 
world.” 

“Do you think I should marry again? Do you want 
me to?” 

“Want you to! Why, Arlie, how could I? What 
makes you think of such a thing?’’ 

“Your talking about it, I suppose.” 

“Nothing of the kind. Can’t you see. my dear—” 
Mrs. Shuman hitched her chair closer. “Don’t you see 

[ 2 5o] 


that I’m trying to tell you what I think best just in case 
anything of the kind should ever come up—in five, ten 
years—so that you’ll be prepared, have some standards 
of judgment, something that an older person sees and 
knows ? That’s been the trouble, in part, that you haven’t 
had such standards. ... I don’t want to hurt you, dear. 
It’s just that I want to guide you, and do what I can 
for you, what’s best, for Herbert’s sake if not for your 
own. You’re going to live a long time yet, I hope, and 
you won’t always have some one watching you. Her¬ 
bert’s going makes me see how accidental our lives are. 
I’ve been sick for a long time now. Five years, one 
year, and I may be gone too. But I’d want the con¬ 
sciousness that I’d done what I could for you. Don’t 
you see? . . . Please answer me. . . . Don’t you see, 
Arlie! Don’t look at me that way. . . .” 

Arlie was standing now. 

“Don’t look at me that way. Sit down. I want to 
talk to you, I want you to see this as it is. Why, if I 
should lose Gloria, and her marriage will be almost like 
losing her, you and Gerald will be all I have. But if I 
should go too I’d want you to have something to guide 
you. . . . Look at me, Arlie. Don’t stare off that way, 
I can’t stand it. Where are you going? Sit down, I tell 
you; sit down!” 

She followed Arlie into the living-room. 

“I will put my arm around you. I won’t have you 
thinking what you are. This is my house and you’re 
not to go upstairs unless I say you can. . . . Arlie, Ar¬ 
lie!” she shrieked, and then fell weeping on a bench at 
the foot of the staircase. A door above clicked shut. 
Her sobbing rose from a suppressed moan to hysterically 
keen indrawals of breath, and a wildness of utterly free 
and animalian hurt. 

Gerald, who had followed them from the porch, stood 
in the middle of the wide doorway regarding her. 

[251] 


Slowly his lower lip projected, curling over his upper 
one. He opened his mouth and his cheeks became taut. 
Mrs. Shuman, controlling herself suddenly, swept down 
to him. “Oh, my baby, my little baby,” she cried, “my 
little Herbert!” 


10 

In her own room Arlie found no tears. She was too 
still for that, as if what she had perceived had blinded the 
centres of instinct, holding her tranced. 

She had been a damn’ fool not to see before. They 
had never wanted her and they hadn’t wanted her family. 
They hated her. They thought she had thwarted Herb, 
held him back, and because they could see no clear way 
out except the way he had impulsively taken, they had 
blamed her. Now that he was dead they wanted their 
own blood, but they wanted also to be rid of her—in any 
easy way, and marriage would be the easiest. Besides, if 
she married she might give up Gerald. They’d adopt him 
all right, oh yes! And all that talk about their not want¬ 
ing her to marry . . . that was why they didn’t care 
whether she read or not. It didn’t matter, now, for she 
wasn’t to be long in the family anyway, and Gerald’s 
background—that, they would look after themselves 
when she was out of their “place in life”—or below it. 

They had planned it all out and begun their campaign 
3.t once, hinting and hinting until they got too close— 
•spilled over. Now, not all the words Mrs. Shuman 
<eould say would ever cover what she had uncovered. 

11 

At luncheon Arlie was taciturn. Indeed, no one had 
many words except Gloria, and she chattered half through 
the meal until she noticed Arlie’s controlled mouth and 

[252] 



her more than usual tenderness toward Gerald. “What’s, 
the matter with this bunch, anyway?” she demanded, 
“Do you all have the glooms because little Gloria is go¬ 
ing to be married and wants to gas about it a little?” 

“That’s hardly the way to correct us, in any case, is 
it?” her mother inquired. Mr. Shuman ate stolidly on, 

Arlie spent the afternoon in her room. Dinner was 
worse than lunch, for by that time, she judged, every¬ 
body had been told. She went directly to bed, taking 
a book with her, but turning out the light at nine. She 
tossed about until she heard a clock strike two. If only 
she hadn’t weaned Gerald so long ago. It would be a 
comfort to nurse him, to have some one really dependent 
on her. That would make her love him more, doing 
things for him. . . . 

Doing things for him would make them love him more 
too. That she had noticed when her broken arm had 
compelled them to help. But Gloria would be going away 
soon . . . going away. If only she were going. . . , 
Why not? She had the money. They didn’t want her. 
If Mrs. Shuman had to care for Gerald a long time, and 
came to love him even more than she did now . . . then 
she could come back for him, and take Gerald utterly 
and forever away. Then she would be oil their hands, 
and so would Gerald. They would suffer intolerably. 
At least Mrs. Shuman would. 

12 

Delicious—to wake to early morning on a farm. The 
air grows dimly and then clamorously brilliant with 
sound, as the sky does with color. Cacklings of the 
earth, and good rich sounds, people astir in the distance, 
and coolness, sweet and translucent, flowing everywhere. 
The dawn comes through the trees like lantern light. 

t 2 53] 


Good, then, lying in bed, to search through the night- 
covered hours, rummaging with a cool and silver hand to 
find what, though mislaid, is surely there: a neat, a per¬ 
fect, and a workable stratagem for meeting the business 
of the day. 


[254] 


CHAPTER XVII 


DURATION 

I 

At breakfast she announced a visit to Coon Falls. 
She would leave Gerald, if he wouldn’t be too much 
trouble, and though she would be gone but a short time 
she would take her trunk; she wanted to go over her 
clothes with her mother. There were mild but ineffec¬ 
tive protests and the next morning she took the train. 

During the wait of twenty minutes at Shelley Junction, 
she rechecked her trunk to Des Moines. Coon Falls 
had been only an excuse; she certainly did not want to 
go home. On the moving train again, she watched the 
track to Coon Falls with no regret, and covered the 
pictures it called up with brighter memories of a trip 
to Des Moines in state fair week when she had been 
fourteen: there had been the pressure of people, lights, 
and streets of glass and stone. She would not know one 
person there, but she was wearied with the people she 
did know and wanted time to think, undisturbed by the 
opinions of others. 

It was to be a walk down another street in life, with 
the protection of a few hundred dollars in the bank 
and more coming every month. When she had found 
her way about she would return for Gerald, and bring 
him up in Des Moines. Herb she would remember— 
but apart from all his family. 

[255] 


The train whistled around a curve, nearer and nearer 
to freedom. Freedom it was, after all. The burning 
weight of her pregnancy had been lifted, and then the 
weight of marriage—for weight it must have been if she 
felt so light now, with her thoughts singing along the 
gleaming stave of dipping and rising wires. 

But as the hours passed she grew tired and cramped. 
Her dreams of the city disintegrated. She began to see 
how vague the details were, and how they gave on va¬ 
cancy as she tried to think them. Just how would she 
live? Just how, when she had Gerald again, would she 
bring him up? Tensing herself she tried to see even a 
few minutes of those years, and could not find a moment. 
Emptiness opened before her ... an illimitable and 
meaningless width after years that had been too broken, 
and too full. 

She shrank. Suddenly, as the train hurled her nearer, 
she did not want Des Moines. She would take the first 
train back—and on that thought she dozed. 

She woke to see the waves of the evening prairie be¬ 
coming blue where trees filled the land beyond the corn, 
and a whisper of smoke lay across the dulled southern 
sky. That would be Des Moines. She was reattached 
to her plan, she would carry it through. 

Houses thickened and raced by; a brick-yard with a 
violence of orange and white light in the vents of the 
kilns; omnipresent smoke; dirty streets. There was a 
general rising as the car darkened with the in-pressing 
of buildings on each side . . . then a street choked with 
automobiles ... a, long station . . . Des Moines. 

2 

After dinner in the station restaurant Arlie boarded 
a street car, crossed the river, and found a hotel. The 
room and bath assigned her she examined wonderingly. 

[256] 


She decided to bathe, and for a half hour laved her¬ 
self in a luxury of water, toying with its flawed and 
brilliant surfaces. Dressed, she sat by the window, 
watching the automobiles bossed with heads, the unindivid¬ 
ual persons, black and foreshortened, walking with ab¬ 
surd steps down the street. Back they came again in the 
low length of light, above which, now that day had gone, 
she was high and isolate. These people were not just 
walking, just riding, but were all going somewhere. 
Was this something she might enter? She must enter. 
A lifting summons pulsed to her through the dwindling 
light, an invitation to join absurdly in a slow, significant 
dance. Somebody was calling from the street, some¬ 
body behind a corner, smiling. She would go down. 

She went, restraining herself to a hurried walk as she 
approached the lobby, as if she were late and not go¬ 
ing to get . . . somewhere ... on time. As she 
crossed the lobby she laughed, and when some men in 
the leather chairs turned to look she laughed again and 
pushed aside the remaining door. ... It was a darker 
street than it had seemed from above, but around the 
corner hung lights. She laughed again, almost a cackle, 
and put her hand against dark stone to steady herself. 
A woman turned to look, and then spoke to a compan¬ 
ion. . . . People were so funny. ... A middle-aged 
man with heavy paunch and mustache smiled as if he 
understood. 

A mouth made prim forced down the before uncon¬ 
trollable gusts; yet every few paces an unreasoning, un¬ 
deniable upshoot of hilarity assailed her. Why couldn’t 
these people—oh, these fools!—understand? You just 
feel that way. Even the white cluster-lights were bland 
and glazed and foolish—dead bubbly souls of ancient, 
inexplicable laughters. Shop windows, luminous with 
winey colors, strips of sky, and a creamy foolishness of 
gauze, with wax women in the latest fashions, their 

[ 257 ] 


cheeks feverishly red, staring at the waxen people in the 
cars, at the black and gay people on the sidewalks, or 
gazing eternally at the dark stories of near buildings 
that stood hugely stupid under the moon. . . . Every¬ 
where somebody waited, with nothing to do but wait un¬ 
til she should come, to look at that same moon held in 
blue sky by cold laughter. Abruptly down a street shone 
a moving picture theatre whose sign sprayed lights at 
the sky: green lights, crimson, yellow fire . . . and un¬ 
der the marquee a white shout of light. Behind her was 
darkness, and back to it she turned, because it was only 
dusky after all; and dusk might hold somebody to laugh 
with her—at the blocks of emptiness and stone that would 
be full and vacant again, and again. It was enough to 
make anybody laugh. 

Her throat felt sore, her side ached. 

She was empty herself, and tired, and wanted to sit 
down. Like a light laughter had gone out in her. She 
had never felt more serious. . . . This was Des Moines. 


3 

Through a mist of weariness she noted a brighter store 
front, a candy shop, and the pull of a white inner blaze 
drew her blinking inside, where the streaky gleam of 
nickel and the hardness of white glaze on marble-topped 
tables wove dazzlingly an intricacy of laced metallic light. 

Her chair was uncomfortable but she was glad to sit 
down and watch dully the two young men at a table. 
They were watching her. . . . She twitched in the satis¬ 
faction of being looked at. Her chocolate ice cream soda 
should come. It came: brown, frothy, and clearly re¬ 
flected in the yellow shimmer that floated beneath the 
impenetrable cold polish of the table, a floating of light 
that formulated a new distance, a brief glimpse into an 
uncanny and infinite depth, strangely superimposed above 

[258] 


the floor and her outstretched feet ... an unfathomable 
depth held in the hard circle and salver of a table top. 

One of the men coughed behind his hand, a preliminary 
cough. She brought her feet back to her chair. An¬ 
other cough, and then whispering and laughter, as over 
some secret. A few bubbles of delayed hilarity rose in 
her. She forced them, wanting to laugh, to share laugh¬ 
ter, but could only smile, a perfectly controlled smile as 
if she too were remembering some secret, one that might 
even render these men a little inferior. . . . 

Another cough. She half turned toward the summons, 
then back. “I say/’ one of them ventured in a tone that 
lapsed as the other’s whisper slipped to her ears: “Stop 
it, you simp, can’t you see her rings?” 

Her left hand, that had grasped the nickel container, 
relaxed with palm upward, only the gold bands of rings 
gleaming at her but concealed from all others. She 
stared at the bands. What had she done? 

The men were laughing at her openly. She sucked for 
the last time at the fluid in her glass and it roared into 
the straw. Another explosion of laughter. . . . She 
walked to the cash register carefully, so that she 
would not betray the quickening dizziness in her, and 
out into the street. She was feverish. 

Back in her room at the hotel her mind flew in re¬ 
lentless circles: she had tried to conceal her rings, she 
had tried to open the way to a flirtation, to walking with 
one of the men, with both—when Herb was cold and 
dark and quiet in his grave, dreaming an unceasing 
dream, of her and of her loyalty and of their boy—who 
wasn’t with her longer. She had laughed, like an idiot 
and at nothing; had laughed beside the buildings, pomp¬ 
ous under the moon; had been interested in what two men 
might think of her. She had concealed her rings from 
them when Herb lay northward, dreaming an unceasing 
dream. She . . . 


[259] 


4 


In the morning, after listing the possibilites in the 
“want ad” columns, she inquired her way about the city, 
at last secured a pleasant front room in a house part 
way up a long hill on the West Side; there were no 
other roomers. She paid her bill at the hotel and ordered 
her trunk sent out. 

It arrived in the afternoon, just as she finished the 
second of two letters: a short one to her parents, inform¬ 
ing them that she was in Des Moines, and another to 
Mrs. Shuman. The latter had been hard to write. As 
she sealed it she did not care whether or not they be¬ 
lieved her story that she had met in Coon Falls an old 
schoolmate, Belle Ritchie, who was coming to Des Moines 
that evening, and that she had hastily decided to go with 
her to do some shopping. She was staying with an aunt 
of Belle’s, and would remain a week or so. More later. 
Love to all and kiss Gerald for me. . . . 

They had never believed her tales, and they probably 
wouldn’t begin now, yet they had to be told something. 
Just what didn’t matter. 


5 

The twisting ride down town, past dingy houses and 
into the cleaner business district with its clamorous 
crescendo, renewed in her a little the excitement she had 
felt on the previous evening. At Sixth and Walnut she 
took the sidewalk, seeking the river. Finding it she found 
also the library, and did not wander back for dinner un¬ 
til seven-thirty. She had never seen so many magazines. 

At last she returned to her room with an evening paper 
and sat in a rocking-chair by the window, choosing a 
wardrobe from the advertisements. Dyeing the illus¬ 
trations in colors remembered from the shop windows 
she draped herself in them, finding the result charming. 

[260] 


It was also something to busy herself with. She rocked 
gently, watching the immediate front of houses, a hard 
front with the city solid beyond them: beyond were shop 
windows and the alluring glass and stone of the chatter¬ 
ing streets down which she could walk, trim and beau¬ 
tiful, and by her side somebody walking step and step, 
somebody proud of her, telling her how beautiful she 
was. His head close to hers, with the clipped hair like a 
shadow by his ear, and the drop of the jaw. “We’ll go 
back now, Arlie,” he was saying, and her name within 
his voice was a caressed sound. “Back to the hotel. ,, 
There she threw her coat off and was softly gathered to 
him. She relaxed. Each desired and was desirable. 
She relaxed to him completely, slim and willowy and 
faint beside his strength. “Herb,” she murmured, and 
his reply was the low tone as when he had bent over the 
car’s side to say good-bye ... at the first, long ago. . . . 
Oblivious she rocked, rocked. . . . He moved, prone be¬ 
side her, and she threw her arms around him, holding 
him close. . . . 

The rocker squeaked. She stopped. He was cold and 
straight and silent, and in her dream nakedly complete 
and dead. She had been giving herself to a dead man, 
to a dissolution. She writhed from the rocker and threw 
herself toward the bed, sinking on her knees beside it. 
“Herb, Herb!” she cried aloud. “It can’t be, it can’t! 
You’re not dead, oh, you can’t be dead, I love you so.” 
Unuttered cries continued in the malign darkness of her 
brain, suddenly vast. “I’m yours, Herb, and I love just 
you, just you, not any one else. Answer me. . . .” 
There was a collapse of the sudden vastness of her brain 
to a smoulder of self. Sobs were in her throat. She 
was pithless, darkened, a blind stupor. Nothing was 
seen, nothing felt. A blind-spot. 

Then gray distance, an outer murmur. Her knees 
were cricks of pain. She heaved herself on the bed. 

[261] 


Soft steps withdrew from the door, tip-toeing down 
the stairs. Somebody had been listening? Somebody 
who had heard her cry out. With the light turned on the 
room was familiar again and hers. Her foot was asleep. 
She sat down again to her paper. She could spend a 
hundred, maybe two hundred, on her clothes. . . . There 
is a friendliness about a newspaper that has not been 
completely read. 


6 

The next day she spent in the stores. At first she was 
bewildered, but becoming more expert as the day went 
on she grew less open to the saleswomen’s suggestions. 
When she returned at last to her room she found piled out¬ 
side her door numerous boxes. The landlady was frankly 
inquisitive, but Arlie said little, and put the boxes in her 
closet unopened. There was no reason to take them out, 
no one to show them to except the landlady, no one to 
wear them for except everybody. What did it matter? 

She tried to read, let the paper fall to her lap, and for 
an hour rocked, rocked. 

Twice in the next week she started for the library, 
but was deflected by distaste for all books and magazines. 
In the newspapers she found happenings. She bought 
all there were, and read with careful interest the vary¬ 
ing stories of the same events: chiefly war. 

In the fall evenings now she walked. The long in¬ 
cline of Grand Avenue drew her past houses and lawns 
such as she had never seen. The Shuman house, she 
felt, would be inconspicuous here. Then the houses dis¬ 
turbed her, as if they expected something of her she 
could not do. Thereafter she walked in the grayer, 
meaner parts of town, and felt comfortably at home. 

A week after she had hidden the new clothes in the 
closet she opened a box and put on a suit. It was 

[262] 


familiar, like a very old suit, though she had seen it only 
once before. Having it in the closet for so long a time 
had made it hers. That night she rose about two, and 
ripping her old nightgown down the middle put on a lacy 
blue one from another box. She lay very straight in 
bed so that she would not rumple it. At last she slept. 

As she read the papers, rocking by the window, she 
would try to look into the days ahead. The last week 
had been part of what she had looked forward to three 
weeks ago. Was the rest to be like it? No, some day 
she would return for Gerald. But after that would she 
continue in Des Moines, growing old there, with no hus¬ 
band and few friends? Would Gerald grow up remem¬ 
bering her as a thin and lonely woman? . . . What was 
Des Moines, after all, blaring with noise, holding thou¬ 
sands of lives, and the place and slow time of her own 
life? 

Realizing one morning that nothing demanded her get¬ 
ting out of bed at any certain hour, she dozed until noon. 
As if to approve her inactivity she found later an imper¬ 
sonal note from Mr. Shuman enclosing a draft for one 
hundred dollars. The money would come like that al¬ 
ways, she reflected . . . the only interruption, the only 
event. She looked again into that bland, featureless time, 
an unhurrying pallor between her and a remote cessation 
of that pallor. 

Much of the days thereafter she spent in bed, closing 
her eyes to the refining lines of the November trees. 
They, and the dulling sky, meant more time gone—and 
to that thought she would have closed her mind. Once 
she had lain down at night to dreams and to a world 
bright or menacing with what was going to happen. 
Now she was looking for nothing, for nobody. No dis¬ 
covery was to be dreaded, there was no secret to be made 
disgracefully known. She had no work to do, not even 
for her son, who was looking to another ror help, and 

[263] 


would so continue until she came to the point, somehow 
not yet reached, of carrying out the one plan in her life: 
tearing Gerald from her mother-in-law. 

But when she thought long on even this she ceased 
to care. Only in those moments when it seemed that 
everything had gone did she clutch back at life with a 
start, with a weird sense of something infinitely valuable 
that had been lost, but what she could not tell until she 
found it. 

Then quickly it would drop into place and she would 
latch the door on it: yes, she would return for Gerald, 
sometime. . . . 


7 

When she was sitting by her window one evening about 
seven, she discovered that her rings, with which she had 
been idle toying, had slipped quite off her fingers into her 
astonished palm. She gasped and looked at them 
stupidly. 

She did not replace them; instead she dropped them in 
a back corner of a drawer and began to dress quickly; 
she was late to dinner. Her best silk stockings, the 
loveliest waist, the better suit . . . she did not know 
why they went on. 

After a well-chosen dinner she sought a moving picture 
show, sought it as if it were part of a plan. The first 
reels flickered pleasantly on; the last reels she endured, 
impatient for the first scene to come again. At last it 
came, and after making perfectly sure of the overlapping, 
she made her way out and turned the corner with un¬ 
questioning steps. But even then she did not know 
where she was going, nor did she know until she sat down 
on the nickel-backed chair, placed her gloves on the white 
table, ordered a chocolate ice cream soda, and looked about 
the candy store she had found on her first night in Des 
Moines. 


[264] 


As she looked the buoyancy of the last hours sank. 
Not even here had life lifted its face, nor time become 
less implacably bland and continuing; the only people 
at the tables were women. Two men were not there at 
all, though a prodigiously fat boy was coming in at the 
door. Swinging at her side her left hand was light 
and unfamiliar. Twice! 

Her memory retraversed the course she had taken, and 
now that she was here she saw that all along she had 
been coming here. Ever since she had hidden the rings 
she had been coming. Twice, in this place, she had con¬ 
cealed her rings. 

She prepared for the coming of remorse. It did not 
come. As she returned on the street car to her room 
her spirit sang with the crescendo of the motors, soar¬ 
ing on when they attained satiety, and opened above dim 
places. 

At home she took the rings out of the drawer and 
handled them. She put them on. They were white and 
gold and very pretty there. But that was all. 


[265] 


CHAPTER XVIII 


SOMERS 

I 

One night in a restaurant she met Somers again. He 
had already seen her and was advancing, his face molded 
in a smile that set two rolls of flesh about his mouth. 
His yellow “lay-back” glistened under the lights. As 
he came to her table his face sobered, and he held out 
his hand. “I’m very glad to see you again, Mrs. Shu¬ 
man,” he said. 

“I’m glad to see you, Mr. Somers. Won’t you sit 
down ?” 

“Thanks. Just a minute. Got an appointment at 
eight, but I always have a little time to chat with a friend, 
I guess.” 

Arlie was too busy with memory to reply, and while 
she thought, her face became wistful. Somers fumbled 
with the silverware until she roused herself. “Well, 
what are you doing now?” 

“Still looking for a show-shop.” 

“Aren’t you going to run the Bijou any more?” It 
was an effort to refer to the place, or to anything in 
Coon Falls, but Somers had always remained apart from 
the town, perhaps because he had come there from Sioux 
City, perhaps because she had never caught him watch¬ 
ing her, speculating. . . . Always he had been easy, kind, 
and very polite. 


[266] 



“No.” He turned her question over. “No, I’m not 
running it any more. Can’t stand the old man. You 
know how he is. Thinks I’m trying to rob him all the 
time. Won’t let me put any life into the old place. It’s 
run down awful now. Say!” 

“Yes?” The running-down of the Bijou was the only 
knowledge she had had of Coon Falls in a year. Com¬ 
ing as a disastrous touch to the whole town it quickened 
her. “How long’s it been since you were there?” she 
asked. 

“Oh, I been in Des Moines about six weeks now.” 

“Yes? I was here before that. Funny we didn’t 
meet. Though I don’t know either, it’s such a big place.” 

He smiled. “Ever been to Chi? No? Well, don’t 
call this burg big then. . . . Listen, what you doing now 
yourself ?” 

“You knew Mr. Shuman died, didn’t you? In an 
auto accident . . . the very day you were in Finley.” 

“Yes, I heard about it when I was leaving. Meant to 
tell you when I come over how sorry I was. . . . Say, 
that was pretty tough, Mrs. Shuman. It sure was. You 
seem to have had enough bad luck, too.” 

She had bent her head at his first words, but with his 
last she raised it, ready to flare into invective. So many 
times, in her racing imagination, she had crushed Mrs. 
Wentlings. She summoned the words now, but they sank 
back as she looked at him. There was surely no malice 
in the face so lugubriously downcast. All her powder 
had been wasted, and this, the only certain reference to 
those months, had not been made by a cat of a woman 
but by a man. She would have to be angry artificially 
if she were angry at all. But what was the use? He 
was so surely sincere and tender. “Oh, I don’t know,” 
she answered at last. “Of course it’s been hard, awful 
hard, to lose Herb. Nobody’ll ever know. . . .” She 
choked a little, then went on: “But as for luck, Mr. 

[267] 


Somers, most people mean money by luck, and I haven’t 
had bad luck that way. Herb left me quite a little, and 
then there’s the allowance from the—the estate, you 
know.” (“Estate” was a beautifully impressive word.) 
“I’ve never had so much to spend. Clothes and every¬ 
thing.” Her eyes glittered over his very respectful face. 
“I’m not happy, though. I couldn’t be. I want . . . 
what I had, you know—” She broke off. 

When she looked up again tears were in her eyes. He 
was still putting spoons together, absent-mindedly, and 
his face was soberer. His eyes, meeting hers, were blue, 
transparent, tender. “I know,” he said. “I know just 
how you feel. I just been there myself, you know. It 
was pretty hard for me, too, to lose Jessie. I—I can’t 
tell you—” 

“To lose Jessie! ... Is Jessie . . . ?” 

“Didn’t you know? Why yes, Jessie, she died last 
April. I supposed of course you—” 

“Jessie!” Her lips broke to a wild grin that, as she 
grew conscious of what she was doing, she contorted 
into a grimace of sorrow; and to the substantiation of 
that she forced a gulp that for an instant would not let 
her speak. “Jessie . . .” she said. Her contracting 
brow and throat began to draw from within the recently 
absorbed tears. Looking through her grief, even as she 
conjured it to become real, an isolate self watched Som¬ 
ers: had he caught that grin before she changed it, be¬ 
fore . . . before she had truly realized what he had said, 
before she knew, before . . . ? She couldn’t have 
grinned. She couldn’t in any way have meant to grin. 
A twitch of the muscle, that was all. You can’t always 
control such things. No, she hadn’t grinned. . . . An 
undivided and deceived self inquired into his face. 
“Poor, poor Jessie,” she said, extending both her hands 
until they lay near the silverware he was still fingering* 

. . . Long hands, colder than his own had been. . . # 

[268] 


"She was sick so long. She had such a hard time.” 

"I supposed you knew,” he said, looking at her with a 
strange timidity, and she was very sure it was the first 
time he had looked at her since he had spoken of Jessie’s 
death. 

No, no, I didn t. Truly I didn’t.” (But for what 
was she. apologizing, she wondered, suddenly questioned 
by that impishly star-like self floating out from the mists 
and brightening. Cover it!) 

Yes, she died last April. It was mighty hard. . . . 
But I got to be going now.” He looked at his watch. 
“Can’t I put you on the street car?” 

The wind was stirring the street air with a pale, reviv¬ 
ing cold. He helped her on the car, but when she turned 
to wave another word of good-bye he was beside her on 
the platform. “I thought I’d just ride out with you,” 
he said. “See that you get home all right. My appoint¬ 
ment can wait.” 

They said very little to each other, and Arlie was glad 
when at last they started to walk up the long hill under 
the frosty pallor of the stars. At the porch he asked for 
her telephone number. “Since we’re here we might chat 
a little, don’t you think, about Coon Falls and every¬ 
thing? . . . I’ll call you up.” 

The next morning she tried to weave into a chain 
thoughts that were circles of steel, remaining hard and 
separate. How might she find out whether he had seen 
that grin—if it had really been a grin—and how could 
she make him understand that you just did those things, 
all at the wrong time, like that first night she had been 
in Des Moines and had given way to such senseless 
laughter? She might approach it indirectly, leading him 
on to admit that sometime he had laughed like that. But 
had he noticed ? Maybe it would be better to let it drop. 
What difference did it make, anyway? He was nothing 
to her but some one she had known, and known in Coon 

[269] 


Falls at that. This was Des Moines. She went out to 
lunch. 


2 

He telephoned the following evening, and as she went 
down to answer she knew she had been waiting for the 
call. They ate dinner at the restaurant where they had 
met, and talked for an hour before they sought a moving 
picture show. He was looking for a house of his own, 
he explained again. Jessie had left him a few hundred, 
and he had a little of his own, but not enough, all told, 
to get the house he wanted. “I want a house in a live 
town. No more Coon Falls for me. Something in a 
town like Mason City or Waterloo or Fort Dodge. I 
don’t need the best house in a city like that. I ain’t 
afraid of a little competition. Just a chance to buck these 
old boys a little—that’s all I ask. . . . Take the ushers 
in this here house. Why not have a nifty little uniform? 
And cut out the pie-face in this aisle. Those things 
count, I tell you; but Great Smoke, I couldn’t tell Tritch- 
ler that. He’d just roll his eyes and let a little more to¬ 
bacco juice dribble down his chin whiskers. He’d just 
go to sleep under a little competition. I’d give him about 
a week and he wouldn’t have ten people in the house. 
All he’d know to do would be to cut prices, and he 
couldn’t stand it to cut.” 

“He’s awful funny and queer, I always thought,” Arlie 
supplemented. 

“Sure, sure thing. What could a man with ideas do 
with him? Just ground down all the time. I tell you, 
the motion picture business in the small town ain’t been 
worked right. Just benches instead of decent seats, for 
instance. And they don’t work the town right. Why, 
they ought to get the town behind ’em. Work up farmer 
matinees for Saturday more. Run educational stuff with 
the schools, and have a religious film for Sunday after- 

[270] 


noons and the ministers talking about it before and offer¬ 
ing up a peppy little prayer. Keep that up a year or two 
and see what you got! Get it ?” 

“N-no.” 

“Why they got the habit, see? The Sunday habit. 
And you ain’t lost any money, because after the first 
month you started a collection. Then after a while you 
called a meeting of the old birds and proposed a nominal 
charge, see? Then, when the people really got the habit 
why you cut it off for a while—not too long—and then 
get your friends to start a petition to the council, see? 
And there you are, running full blast, seven days a week. 
. . . But you don’t see Tritchler playing any game like 
that. No sir, he’s too slow in the head, that guy is.” 

3 

“When can I see you again?” he asked on the porch 
that night. 

“Tomorrow?” 

“Good. I’ll be around about six, say, and we’ll eat.” 

4 

“But why don’t you get a theatre and put some of 
these ideas into practice ?” she asked Somers two eve¬ 
nings later as they finished dinner. (She had already 
forced him to let her pay for her own.) 

“Great God, girl! that’s just what I’m trying to do, 
but I ain’t got the money.” 

“I see.” 

“It’s this way. I got a little of my own, and a little 
that an aunt left Jessie. But it ain’t enough to get what 
I want.” 

“Can’t you borrow?” 

“Well, I’ll tell you: it’s this way. I’ll tell you the 

[271] 


whole thing. I got in bad up in Sioux City. Had a 
little jewelry store in the old days and I went broke. 
Went through bankruptcy, see?” 

She didn’t, but nodded as if she understood completely. 

“And you go through bankruptcy and you can’t get 
money easy unless you get it from a friend; and most of 
them want to talk about the weather. Now see how it 
is—sometimes a man gets an idea that the people aren’t 
ready for. Good idea, you know, but the time ain’t ripe. 
That’s something you can’t control. That’s the way it 
was with me. My idea was too good, that’s all, and I 
went broke. Then we went to Coon Falls and I got in¬ 
terested in the show business again, Jessie died, and here 
I am. ... I don’t want to boast, of course, but some¬ 
times a man has to take stock of himself, and ex—evalu¬ 
ate himself, and it does seem to me I got more good ideas 
about the picture show business than any one in Iowa. 
Yes sir, I think I have.” 

“Well, I think you have too, Mr. Somers. It’s surely 
all right to have faith in yourself.” 

“I’m glad you look at it that way. I don’t want you 
to think I’m just throwing the bull.” 

She was quieter than usual at the show that evening, 
and when he said on the porch that the time had gone too 
quickly she asked him to come in. 

For the first minutes she was nervous, for while she 
felt sure the landlady had gone to bed there was no 
telling, and she didn’t want her to come in, or to discover 
their presence. “Let’s not wake anybody,” she cautioned 
as his deep voice became more and more interested in 
his ideas. His lowered tones pleased her, and he was 
very handsome as he sat on the edge of the blueflowering 
cone of light from the reading-lamp. His hands, as he 
gestured with his cigarette, were pale but strong and 
warm—as she recalled; he always shook hands when he 
came or departed. 


[272] 



Her thoughts drifted with the dim canopy of blue-gray 
smoke that eddied above the lamp and wavered toward 
the ceiling. Then she watched the pallor of his hands, 
not heeding what he said. 

She dreamed that night of Gerald, who for a while 
tugged at her breast as she nursed him, and then, full 
fed, dropped as of old, a ripe fruit from the bough, and 
relaxed himself in her arms to let her stroke his hair . . . 
until it lay back on his head yellow and glossy. He ad¬ 
vanced toward her pale, strong hands and she woke to 
midnight and idle time, hugely flowing. 

Clearly out of the darkness grew the face of her baby 
again, becoming Herb. Inexplicably it was Somers, then 
Gerald, wistful and distant. From the chasmy possibili¬ 
ties of that face she tried to hide herself, crawling back in 
terror as if from the edge of a precipice. 

5 

Subtle disflavors ran in her blood that day, and as .she 
read or wandered through the stores, trying the library 
and again Grand Avenue, a dull consciousness persisted 
that something had been left undone. Somewhere a door 
was pushed to, but was not latched; and she couldn’t find 
it to snap it shut. 

Toward evening she felt that she would have to go to 
find Somers if he didn’t come, and he had not said that 
he would. She postponed going to dinner, hoping he 
would call. By nine he had not come and had not tele¬ 
phoned. Dinnerless she went to bed, tossing through 
harsh hours to a thin, bleak morning. 

The day was angular and bitter as yesterday had been, 
piling to a crisis of angular moods as dinner time ap¬ 
proached—straight lines and gray. Even his coming did 
not relieve her. In his presence she was only the more 
fully aroused to expectation. All doors were closed 

[273] 


and the air of life stale. She wanted an opening. 

When he settled himself, gesturing, by the blue lamp, 
she realized that down a suddenly discovered hall stood 
the door opening out. Down the hall she rushed: “How 
much, Mr. Somers, do you think it would take to get the 
kind of theatre you’d need?” 

“Let’s see. . . . It’d have to be in a town of over fif¬ 
teen thousand, you know, and I’d have to have a fairly 
good location. Can’t get that easy now in a city like 
Des Moines or Sioux City. You want something like 
Mason City, or Cedar Rapids, or Ft. Dodge. You’d 
probably want to do some redecorating if you bought. 
... I don’t know, maybe three thousand or so with what 
I got would get me started.” 

“Would two thousand help any?” 

“Might give a chance to get something. If I’d got 
that much I could raise more, I guess. It wouldn’t be 
just what I’d want, but . . . yes, that would give a 
chance, all right.” 

She was fumbling at the knob of the door. 

“You know, I got some bank stock that isn’t working. 
I mean, I could raise money on it and lend that.” 

He was silent, his interested face waited. 

“I don’t know just how,” she went on, “but I guess I 
could find out.” 

“Oh, sure, that’s easy,” he said very softly, as if not 
to mar the perfection of what was forming. 

“I’d have to write about it. . . . But I believe in your 
ideas, Mr. Somers. I think they’d pay. Maybe they’d 
make me a little money as well as you. We could work 
out some kind of agreement.” 

“Say, Mrs. Shuman, I didn’t think you had it in you! 
I never thought you d be a business woman! You were 
too pretty and all for that. No sir, I didn’t suppose you 
had it in you! . . . But say,”—he leaned forward ex¬ 
pressively—“I don’t want you to think I was going to ask 

[274] 


you for anything like that. Didn’t even know you had 
the stock. ... You were just an old friend I could sorta 
clear up my ideas on. You see, don’t you?” 

A clean wind was blowing through the open door, 
flushing her face with brightness. 

“Oh,” she protested, “I didn’t think anything like that. 
It’s just a business proposition. I can have an idea or 
two myself, can’t I?” She laughed. It was good to 
laugh because she was happy, and the wind was blowing 
to a distance all that was old and stale. . . . “I’ll write,” 
she said at last, when he was leaving, “and find out about 
it. But you come back, because we’ll want to talk things 
over.” 

She composed a letter to the Shumans in the morning, 
asking them to send on her certificate of stock, but she 
gave no reasons. With the letter‘posted she felt content, 
and the present began to hum a little now that the future 
was drawing it taut. 

6 

The Shumans replied at once, but did not send the 
stock. Mr. Shuman couldn’t get in to the safety deposit 
box for a few days. Wouldn’t it be better for her to 
confer with them before she did anything with it? Mrs. 
Shuman hoped Arlie wasn’t going to give it up for any 
of the oil stocks being peddled. They were all frauds. 

Arlie regretted that she hadn’t taken complete charge 
of her own affairs, rather than leaving them largely to 
Mr. Shuman. She replied curtly that she wanted the 
stock; she was not going to invest in oil or anything else. 
“A loan isn’t an investment,” she told herself. Somers 
she told nothing—except that they would have to wait a 
few days more. He asked no questions. 

Instead he talked and planned. They went to shows 
afternoon and night now, Arlie always insisting on pay¬ 
ing her own way. She rose in the morning with a sense 

[275] 


of occupation. Her lethargy was gone; she no longer 
slept until noon. 

At night they returned to the living-room, which usu¬ 
ally was vacant, and there was more talk, more planning. 

“Now that I begin to see this thing shape up,” Somers 
said one night, “I get all sorts of ideas. I tell you, it’s 
going to be a great little old house.” He paced the room, 
fingered soft chords on the piano, and sat down on the 
stool. “You know, playing the pictures is the right idea, 
but it don’t go far enough. What you want first is a 
place for people to come to to get away from everything 
homelike. ‘Different from Home’—that wouldn’t be a 
bad slogan, would it, if it weren’t for getting all the la¬ 
dies’ aids down on you? But that’s right, just the same. 
Pretty girl ushers, thick carpets on the aisle, and per¬ 
fume. Maybe you noticed how different the houses 
smell. Some of ’em musty as a cellar—just like people. 
Now that ain’t the right idea at all. First you want good 
fresh air. Then you want to perfume it. Shut your 
eyes and let me take you to any good house here and 
you’ll know right away where you are. Now why 
woudn’t this be the right gag? Find out from the drug¬ 
gists which is the most popular perfume, then use it. See 
what happens? Every time a fellow goes with his girl 
he gets to thinking of your theatre, see? Nothing like 
a smell to take you some place. Naturally he comes, and 
comes again when he ain’t with the girl. Furthermore, 
wherever the perfume goes your ad goes with it.” 

“But people get tired and change,” Arlie objected, 
seriously. 

“Sure, and there’s nothing to prevent your changing 
with ’em, is there?” 

“I see.” 

“That’s all right then, only I got some ideas that are 
worth two of that. ... Or would you rather hear of ’em 
some other time?” 


[276] 


“They’re awfully interesting, only I’m not sure I al¬ 
ways get them, see just how they would really work out, 
I mean. . . . Suppose you play something.” She rose 
and stood by him at the piano. “I haven’t heard any 
good music for a long time.” 

He looked up at her. She felt that she was dominat¬ 
ing him, that he was smaller, even in his bigness. He 
stood up. “Listen, girl, I been wondering about you. 
Where are you bound for, anyway? What are you do¬ 
ing in Des Moines?” 

“Nothing.” She was herself and small again. 

“But you must have something in mind. What is it?” 

“No, nothing. I’m just here. It’s the only place I 
know to be.” 

“Are you going to bring the kid down here, or are you 
going back?” 

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought. I ought to, but I 
can’t somehow. It’s like a trunk that’s too heavy to 
move. You just look at the handle.” 

“But you don’t have to think about some things. . . . 
Money, for instance.” 

“No, and it’s the first time, too. Though my allow¬ 
ance isn’t ‘going to go as far as I thought it was.” 

“No? You get a good bit, don’t you? I mean, you’re 
not going to starve or anything.” 

“I’m not going to starve, no. Not on a hundred a 
month.” 

“Oh . . . that’s what you get, is it? Seems to me 
they might have . . . Still, that’s more’n most girls 
make.” 

“That doesn’t include Gerald, you know. It’s just for 
me, and I have the bank stock beside and some other 
things. Those keep going on always.” 

“Yes?” Somers contemplated his smoke. 

“The allowance stops, of course, if I ever marry.” 

“Oh well,” Somers drew the words back out of the 

[277] 


smoke. “We’d be making enough money by that time, 
anyway. ... I mean,” his tone hastened, “I mean the 
loan, you know, and all. With you in on it it’d be a 
company, a sort of partnership, you see. We’d be mak¬ 
ing a lot of money, you and I, by the time you’d want to 
marry, so if the right fellow come along, why you’d have 
enough. ... I mean the right fellow would have the 
kale, of course. But to help out, to make you in¬ 
dependent.” 

She accepted his self-rescue by turning the talk back 
on Coon Falls, and in twenty minutes he left. With one 
mind she summoned a good-night; with another she 
worked to recall the exact words he had used. They 
were not very clear, he had talked so much in the succeed¬ 
ing minutes. 

The words were clear enough in the morning, however, 
and she was relieved when Somers did not appear for 
two days. With knowledge of his plans she began to 
make some of her own: a quick return to Lawson for 
Gerald, and winter with her parents in Coon Falls. She 
couldn’t marry. Especially she couldn’t marry Somers. 
To marry at all would be to do what the Shumans 
wanted, and that would be disloyalty to Herb, even if 
they were his parents. But she didn’t want to marry. 
Wouldn’t. She saw herself as once before: slim and 
made beautiful by pain, ageing in a loyalty cleansed by 
the pain of years, beautiful as a colored light losing its 
colors and refining to a hueless brilliance; in that she 
would find death and life, at the end of years. 

She would go to Coon Falls. Gerald would be with 
her, he would go to school there, grow up; together they 
would go on walks, read, talk; and go down Main Street 
together, past Horack’s Grocery, Nolte’s Jewelry Store, 
and the amber blaze above the Bijou. They would go 
often to see the pictures, and old man Tritchler. 

She would go to Coon Falls. . . . 

[278] 


Another letter of inquiry came from the Shumans. 
She wrote again demanding the stock; it was hers and 
they were to send it at once. With the letter mailed she 
felt better. It would be giving in to them not to get it 
before she left. That might prevent her departure for 
a few days, but it was wholly necessary. 

In Coon Falls she would take Gerald to the Bijou ev¬ 
ery evening. 


7 

Two nights later Somers appeared again. 

“You’re lucky to find me here,” she told him. “I was 
just going out.” 

“Yes? . . . Well, I been busy for a day or two writ¬ 
ing some ads for a fellow. Needed the money. . . . 
Say, let’s not go down town. The old lady ain’t around. 
Let’s just chin a little.” 

She led the way into the living-room, thinking that it 
didn’t greatly matter what they did. She might tell him 
there had been a hitch in getting the stock, that the Shu¬ 
mans refused to send it until they had seen her. As she 
contemplated that move, in her blind imagination Somers 
softened, diminished; became plastic, something easily 
handled. But when she turned to him he was standing, 
uncannily solid, by the table: he was not going to be so 
easy to manipulate as she had supposed. To treat him 
as she had momentarily dreamed would be—inconvenient. 

His first words made it even harder. “Have you 
heard from the Shumans yet?” 

“Yes, I—they’re going to send it in a few days. Mr. 
Shuman’s been sick.” 

“Too bad.” He sat down. 

There was crescendo of silence, and at its peak he 
looked at her. His eyes were darker, shadowed by ques¬ 
tion, good yet difficult to look into. Frankly they asked 
her if he were going to have the chance he wanted, if he 

[ 279 ] 


were to be lifted out of what he had endured but what 
he had never let her suspect before. Perhaps he had not 
let himself know it too often; he would have brightened 
it over with his ideas. She understood now, floodingly, 
and she looked back into his intricate eyes until they grew 
simple, round, receiving, and she was indrawn mothlike 
to a point of light on one of them that—even as she in¬ 
tently watched—was the focus of a sudden roaring cone 
of soft darkness that shut out and became the whole uni¬ 
verse. ... It broke, and his face appeared smoothly, sol¬ 
idly before her, a face to touch with inexplicable tears. 
Her eyes dropped then, as if they had spoken some word 
that were better withheld, but which it had been com¬ 
fortable to utter. 

“I hope,” he began, ‘‘that it does come, soon.” 

She made, at that point, a trip to Lawson and returned 
with the stock. “It’ll be here,” she affirmed. “Don’t 
worry.” But‘she wanted it then, to produce it magically, 
as long before she had drawn from behind her back one 
of Phil’s toys, to the sudden healing of his distress. At 
the time she had felt clean and possessed of quietness, as 
she felt now, in her sureness about the stock. Yet Som¬ 
ers’s going to the piano and striking only a few chords 
stirred with lights and shadows the blue quiet of her 
mood. Pier serenity became a delicate fever. 

“Don’t,” she said. 

“Why not?” 

“I don’t know.” She held out a hand through the 
darkness come about her; it was grasped. She rose and 
went to him blindly, with a little cry. An old dark wine 
was mounting to her head, flashing as it came, and 
through a whirl and dim commotion she was held. She 
had come home. 

“Don’t, Somers, don’t,” she whispered. 

“I can’t help it, I . . .” 

“We shouldn’t.” 

[280] 


“But why? What can we do?” 

They had moved instinctively to the hall and stood be¬ 
fore the hat rack. Wordlessly she fingered at his coat. 
He reached for his hat and stepped toward the door. 

“Tell me,” she said, when a tense, sensitive space was 
between them; then she crossed that to be near him: 
“Tell me, what’s your first name. I can’t remember.” 

“Ed,” he replied, and opened the door, “Good-night, 
Arlie.” 

“Good-night,” she answered. 

As she went upstairs she heard the landlady and her 
son returning from somewhere, but it was not until an 
hour later when they passed her door on their way to 
their beds that she realized she had heard them. 


[281] 


CHAPTER XIX 


INFIDELITY 

I 

She was kept long in bed by the broken glamour of 
dreams and memory; Somers was still at the piano, mak¬ 
ing resonances that were like voices in her; she was 
saying “Don’t”—and there was union with him. Yet she 
missed, in each dreaming rehearsal of that union, the sur¬ 
prised discovery of a dark elation that made everything 
right. She dreamed through it again—and again; but 
each time she missed what she needed to absolve her from 
the past that was flying nearer. Herb obstinately per¬ 
sisted, as if he were alive, distant only a few miles, and 
coming to her quickly. The knowledge of his coming 
was her own expectation. 

Yet why should she be disturbed? It was right for 
her to love again, to marry again. After two or three 
years no one would say or think anything. But time was 
■—the number of days and months didn’t matter. What 
mattered was your own feelings, and how much you 
lived. She felt herself distant from Lawson and Finley 
by the broadest widths of time she had known. Not 
even her pregnancy had seemed longer. 

Herb had no right ... he who had made her suffer 
so, and had not married her for all she could say, but, 
going to California, had left her to a horror of winter. 
He had no right now to insist, as he was insisting, by his 

[282] 


helplessness, by his straightness and white face of silence. 
It was unfair of him to be dead. . . . But it had not been 
Herb, it had been herself, those nights. She had clung 
to him in the car, urging him to greater speed. That it 
had been imperfect and humiliating had been her fault 
more than his. Then there had come, under the trees, 
starlit completion, and she had drawn him to her arms 
again. He was dead now. 

Yes, but he did have a right; in so far as she had been 
unreluctant he had a right—no! only a right to persist 
with a white face in the earth’s darkness, but not to rob 
her. It was enough that he should always subtract some¬ 
thing from her life; too much that in his death he should 
annul all that might come to her—just by his infinite 
helplessness. 

The December sunrise was embossing the low sky with 
flamy clouds, and under it the city was black and drab, 
and white with snow. It was a sky over her own day, 
not his. She sprang out of bed ... it was her own day 
. . . and exulted so in the cold of the room that she did 
not close the window until she had dressed. 

That night she and Ed ate crackers and chocolate in a 
secluded booth down town. When only a few remained 
in the front part of the store he drew her to him again. 
With that, she was cleansed, music rose and fell, flute 
music, dying into her flesh. Then something began to 
go wrong in her, and she roused her mind to find herself 
pitying Herb. Even here he followed. Was it faithless¬ 
ness in her ? Why was it ? Whatever it was, she 
couldn’t be at peace in Ed’s arms, but only listless, silent. 

“What’s the matter?’’ he asked softly. 

“I don’t know. I’m tired, I guess.” 

“What you been doing today?” 

“Nothing. Funny, isn’t it, I’d be tired?” 

“Maybe you worry too much. Shouldn’t do that. 
Come here.” 

[283] 


Instead she drew away and adjusted her hair. “Let’s 
go home,” she said. 

“Not on your life. It’s never late till it’s early. Let’s 
have another chocolate.” 

She acquiesced, hoping he would say something of 
marriage. That might set things straight. That would 
make her more faithful to Herb, if he did. This loving 
... it was wrong. It might make Somers think what 
he shouldn’t. If they were married, though, her faith¬ 
lessness would be more faithful, somehow. ... It was 
all a circle, a yanking merry-go-round. What sense was 
there in such a thought as that, anyhow? 

But he did not speak of marriage, and on the porch at 
last she refused to kiss him good-night. Was it always 
to be twisted? Was she always to be cheated? Her 
youth, her greenness, and her miserable pregnancy had 
cheated her with Herb; and was Herb, with all that had 
gone before, going to cheat her now? Or was it Somers 
who was denying her? . . . She wanted to throw to the 
floor the brush and comb tray on her dresser, or to hurl 
a bottle of perfume at the window. She needed to 
smash, smash . . . Something had to be ground satisfy- 
ingly to bits. In a fury she gasped and shook herself, 
and pounded on the bed, wanting to scream . . . until 
she lay exhausted and panting. 

2 

“I’ll have the stock by tomorrow,” she told him 
that evening, “if you think you can still find use for 
it.” 

“Is that so?” he asked eagerly. “Say, that’s great. I 
just heard today of a dandy house. Over in Grand 
Forks—livest town in Iowa. Twenty-five thousand, they 
claim; probably have twenty-one or two. Stucco, the 
house is; holds four or five hundred, and I can get it 

[284] 


cheap. Things can begin to move, right now. It won’t 
be just ideas I’ll be having, it’ll be a House!” 

“I’m glad. . . 

They became enthusiastic. Arlie began to feel pro¬ 
prietorship. Dropping the “I,” each said “we.” It was 
another light turned on. 

Ed stopped in his pacing to sit on the arm of her chair. 
He drew her against himself. His hand cupped her 
chin, made it feel small, made her bend to him pliantly. 
“But say, Arlie, I can’t do this alone. I. got to have 
more’n your money—invested, I mean. I want you, kid. 
What do you say ? Why not make this clinch for good ?” 

It had come, but it did not right matters as she had 
expected. It seemed that there was nothing she wanted 
that she was going to have, and nothing she had that she 
very much wanted. Maybe marriage with him would 
become the satisfaction she had missed. Yet he should 
have asked her before—this, even as she knew, with her 
head slipping lower on his breast, that when next he 
asked she would answer yes. 

“Listen, Arlie, what do you say? You know I want 
you. I think you want me, don’t you?” 

She freed her head to nod. 

“I knew it,” he said softly. “And you’ll marry me?” 
She nodded again. 

“When will you?” 

“Whenever you want me to.” There was comfort in 
having him decide; but he did not decide. They d talk 
of it later, he said, and began again on “the house” and 
Grand Forks. She listened wearily. It was not what 
she wanted to hear. She wanted to ask him about Jessie. 
Perhaps that would let her know better about Herb, and 
how to think of him. If it weren’t for Mrs. Shuman she 
would be freer. To marry would be to cut adrift from 
the Shumans—and to give Herb back to his mother. 
Yet could she have both Herb and Ed ? ... It couldn t 

[285] 


have been the same with Ed and Jessie. No use to ask. 

“What is it?” he inquired shortly. “‘What are you 
thinking about ? Don’t you want to talk about these 
things ?” 

“I was . . . just a little worried,” she began. “I—I 
lied to you a little, Ed. About the stock.” 

His face changed. “Yes?” 

“It’s not coming tomorrow.” 

“Oh. . . .” 

“It’s here, now. It’s upstairs.” 

The old smile came out. “Oh!” But how different. 

“I didn’t mean to tell you, but I couldn’t help it. It 
came this morning. I’ll get it.” 

When she returned he was improvising at the piano 
and would not look at the certificate. “What does it 
matter?” he said. “It’s here.” She insisted, however, 
and when he had looked he began on the film service he 
would get. “None of this here year old stuff for me. 
I*m no Tritchler.” 


3 

“I’ll have to go to Lawson for Gerald,” she told him 
just before he left that night. 

“Sure,” he answered, after he had turned to the door, 
“we’ll want the little one.” Then he came back to kiss 
her again. 

What had been the expression on his face when he 
turned to the door? If only she could have seen! Had 
he forgotten Gerald altogether? Didn’t he want him, or 
did he feel sorry for him? “The little one,” he had 
called him. 

4 

She had originally intended to get a lawyer’s advice 
about lending the money, but now she wanted only to 

[286] 


have it done quickly. She telephoned Ed in the morn¬ 
ing to make any arrangements that were necessary. 
Later he came out after her. “What’s the shortest 
way?” she asked, after he had explained the different 
things they might do. 

“The shortest would be to just sign it over . . . here.” 

“Give me your pen.” 

“But maybe you’d better—” 

“Give me your pen!” 

It had been a burden as long as Ed needed it, she told 
herself. 


5 

At lunch he returned indirectly to the matter of their 
marriage. “The option will mean I’ll have to go up there 
before the week is out, and I don’t know why you 
shouldn’t go with me. Do you ?” 

“You mean, be married this week?” 

“I mean this afternoon.” 

“I couldn’t do that.” 

“Why not? What does it all mean, anyway? Why 
be apart any longer than we got to? We love each other, 
don’t we? and there’s no one to ask except us. Listen, 
why not?” 

“But I don’t have Gerald.” 

“What of it? You can get him later. Or you could 
go by way of Lawson, afterwards, and meet me in Grand 
Forks. This afternoon we slip up to Boone on the inter- 
urban and get married and come back tonight.” 

What would it matter, after all? Maybe the sooner 
the better was right. She didn’t want to slip back into that 
chasm of time from which Ed had lifted her. She would 
never have been able to climb out. “I wish we didn’t 
have to talk about it here,” she said. But no one could 
hear them at their table in the corner. Why had she 
said that ? What was it she wanted ? She was an- 

[287] 


noyed at her own futility, and at the wants bristling out 
of her vacancies. Dully she forked her salad, recalling 
remote dull images, knowing again old pressures, Ed’s 
hands upon her. She could recall the circumstances of 
her love for him, but not the love itself. She was feel¬ 
ing lonelier than ever, as if all life were going to pass 
her by unless she reached out to hold it. 

She advanced her hand toward him, hesitatingly, with 
tears gathering in her eyes. That loneliness might over¬ 
take her even yet. Her fingers clawed delicately at the 
tablecloth, nearer to him and nearer. ‘Til go,” she said, 
“this afternoon.” 

There were tears in her eyes. Was there more to say 
now ? The time would never return: “And Ed . . . 
you’ll be good to me, won’t you, always?” 

His face was very handsome as he replied, and his eyes 
shone with a kinder blue than she had ever seen there. 
“Arlie, I’ll make you the happiest woman in the world. 
By God, I will!” 

The tears coming now made her withdraw her hand. 
Unobtrusively she touched her handkerchief to her eyes. 
“It’s silly of me, I know,” she apologized, “but it means 
so much, Ed. You know it means so much.” 

Words he had been about to say were not spoken. 
They were withheld behind the questioning of his face, 
in which tender assurance had given place to an almost 
amused comprehension. Her thought ran back—what 
was it he was suspecting, or understanding? As she 
puzzled her pose broke and she understood that her last 
tears had been artificial, that she had been theatrically 
assuming an innocence and playing on it. She had not 
had the chance with Herb. Then her thought glanced 
from too full an awareness of her deception of herself, 
and, possibly, of Ed. He really had led her into it. She 
clenched her hand, she would hit. . . . Yet when he rose 
from the table and stood ready with her coat, smiling 

[288] 


down at her, she touched him unnecessarily under cover 
of the garment. Confidently he took her arm, and she 
let him support her as they walked out. 

7 

The ride on the interurban to Boone became a flight 
through white places. The snow was glazed in the wes¬ 
tern distance by the setting sun. The car bumped and 
swayed and raced like a runaway, as if it were abetting 
them. 

In Boone, after an interminable ride on a miniature 
street car, they came to the courthouse. In half an hour 
they had been married by a justice of the peace, and in 
the evening returned to Des Moines. 

The ride was dreary, and long before the end Arlie 
was wretchedly tired. For the last fifteen miles she slept 
on Ed’s shoulder. In Des Moines they went directly to 
a hotel. 

When the bell-hop had left the room Ed took her hand 
in his and kissed it. “Arlie,” he said, “I don’t want you 
to be afraid. I’m going to take awful good care of you, 
dear. Honest I am. You know that, don’t you, and be¬ 
lieve it?” 

“Of course I do.” She was just beginning to won¬ 
der why they had taken such a long trip, and a useless 
one, when they might have been married so conveniently 
in Des Moines. But the trip had been taken, there was 
small use in discussing it . . . and he had asked more 
questions that she had answered. What were they ? 

“But you won’t, will you? Be afraid, I mean, of life 
with me ?” 

“Be afraid of life with you?” 

“Well ... I mean, I suppose, just of me?” 

She had disengaged her hand from his to recline into 
her chair; in the sombre shadow beyond the dull light 

[289] 


her dress relapsed into dark lines about the firm ob¬ 
scurity of her figure; the face she lifted to him was pale 
with an inner fatigue he could not suspect, and newly hard 
and thin. ‘‘Come here,” she answered. He came, bend¬ 
ing over and enveloping her with his shadow and presence. 
She would summon the old blindness if he staid with 
her. Her arms went about his head, drawing him 
closer. . . . Wasn't it going to come . . . ? “Ed, 
oh ... I won’t be afraid of you. Not of you. . . . 
Hold me, hold me!” 


[290] 


CHAPTER XX 


TRIANGLE 

I 

“But my dear girl,” said Mrs. Shuman, “there’s no need 
on earth of your doing that. You have plenty to live 
on, and if you haven’t we can make it enough.” 

Though knowing she could not accept, Arlie looked at 
the dry gift for a moment before rejecting it: “I don’t 
want more. I have enough. What I want is something 
to do.” 

“Then why not go on with your education? You 
could go to the university, or go east to school if you 
wanted to, and Gerald could stay with us, just as he 
has.” In her earnestness Mrs. Shuman leaned forward 
her tall, sallow face. 

“I could go east . . . ? I ... I don’t want to.” 

“Why not ?—Or why not the university, then ? That’s 
near, and you could get home to see Gerald, often as you 
wanted to. Think what it would mean to him in later 
years if you had an education.” 

“Herb didn’t have.” 

“He had two years at Ames, and would have had more 
if he hadn’t married.” 

It had come too late, but not so late as to avoid an 
instant’s feverish stir of old impulses—fading memo¬ 
ries of pages read and turned to fresh characters, fugi¬ 
tive interests. But Ed was waiting for her in Grand 

[291] 


Forks, her husband was waiting. Just to clear herself 
she wanted to tell Mrs. Shuman about him, to break 
through the dirty coil of protection she had woven and 
was still weaving, and would even now strengthen: ‘'I 

can’t help that. I don’t want it. I got a good job in 
Grand Forks and I can save all I make. I don’t want 
to be a drain on you always.” 

“Oh well.” Mrs. Shuman settled back to her book 
and Arlie went to look for Gerald. 

She wished she might go that night, but had said she 
would not go yet for a day or two, not until they had 
talked it over. They had: the necessity, the wisdom, the 
respectability of work in a moving picture show, the 
difficulty of caring properly for Gerald, even with the 
help of the aunt who was supposed to live in Grand 
Forks—and the only results were apparent obstinacy on 
her part and increased coolness on Mrs. Shuman’s. At 
any moment something might turn up to let them know 
the truth—that she was married. Why had she given in 
to Ed when he had explained the trip to Boone? They 
ought to lose the allowance somehow—but to give it up 
by her own action would be wrong to Ed. Unless she 
could make them so mad, by little things, that they’d stop 
it anyway, without knowing. Still, that wouldn’t be 
playing square with Ed, either. 

At first she had turned sick at Ed’s explanation, but he 
had argued so plausibly. If they had been married in 
Des Moines the notice would have been in the Des Moines 
papers, to which he had been sure the Shumans sub¬ 
scribed. They would see it, and the allowance would 
stop. They needed that money; at least they needed the 
loan of it for the first months, if the show was to be 
well started. The right film service would cost tremen¬ 
dously, uniforms for the ushers, countless things; and 
there was no use in starting if they couldn’t start right. 
After a year or so they could pay it all back. It was 

[292] 


really no more than a loan; and after all she’d gone 

through she deserved at least that much. Well ... as 

a loan, to be paid back as soon as possible . . . she had 
given in, and after the second day had come for Gerald. 

“Say ‘mama’ boy,” she coaxed, as he started for the 

door of the bedroom, her old room and Herb’s. 

He turned to look at her with innocent solemnity. 
“Gama,” he said. 

“No, no, Gerald, say ‘mama, mama.’ Say that.” 

“Gama,” he reiterated, and pried at the door with 
chubby, futile fingers. At last it swung softly open and 
he trotted off without a backward glance. She heard him 
letting himself, step by step, down the stairs, then the 
tudge-tudge of his feet on the floor, and his grand¬ 
mother’s voice: “Well, my precious one! Did he want 
to see his old Gama?” 

Beneath the hurt in her heart a sinister small light 
increased. Part of her plan would work. Mrs. Shu¬ 
man at least would be broken up to have Gerald go; his 
probable going was already making her fertile in plans. 
Mr. Shuman didn’t seem to care. He had hardly smiled 
since she returned, though it might be because of his 
neuritis. 

She looked about the room at the few changes. Be¬ 
cause she had not made them herself she felt out of place, 
and knew an alien quality in the room. Perhaps it was 
right that she should. For anything of Herb’s to be¬ 
long to her would be wrong, now; and to sleep there 
again, haunted by midnights, would be almost as much 
as she could stand. Discord of dark and blond that made 
each wrong, and made herself sunken, formless, miser¬ 
able. 

When she went down Gerald was playing with spools 
at Mrs. Shuman’s feet. 

“How did you find your family, Arlie? I forgot to 
ask.” 


[293] 


She would have to lie again. Fortunately she had 
written to her mother when she first went to Des Moines, 
and her mother had replied—the only letter Arlie had 
ever received from her. “Oh, about the same. I was 
only there a little while, you know. Pa’s got Bright’s 
disease now. He didn’t look at all well.” She shouldn’t 
have talked about it, she reflected. They might find out 
she hadn’t been to Coon Falls at all, and it was enough 
to carry through the one big deception. 

The next day she left for Grand Forks. 

Gerald cried so at parting from his grandmother that 
Arlie could not quiet him until they were on the train. 
Even then it was by no device of her own, but with a 
bright silver clock Mrs. Shuman had tucked into the 
suitcase at the last minute. “He’s always wanted to 
play with it,” she explained, “and I’ve never let him have 
it. But it may help a little. He hates to leave his old 
Gama so!” She clutched the small form to her, sobbing 
brokenly until Gerald had twisted away to the bookcase, 
from which he pulled some farewell volumes. It was 
when they took him to the automobile and his grand¬ 
mother staid behind that he began to cry, stretching back 
toward the diminishing figure of the woman on the porch, 
who waved a handkerchief white as the snow around her. 

In the train he drowsed in Arlie’s arms, still clutch¬ 
ing the bright clock, and as the dreams flowed in and 
clouded his eyes she laid him straight on the opposite 
seat, his head on a small pillow. She turned to the fly¬ 
ing landscape. The “plan” had not seemed so wise at the 
time; and after all, at the moment, it had hurt her to 
hurt Mrs. Shuman. It would mean a good deal to lose 
the adorable soft bloom helplessly sleeping to the tune 
of the clicking rails, and especially to lose him forever— 
as all had obscurely seemed to know that Mrs. Shuman 
was doing. Yet perceptibly rising now came the fumes 
from that sinister inner light; it broke to a whiteness of 

[294] 


steady flame: matters had been in a measure evened; she 
had beaten the woman, obstinately beaten her. The little 
victory sealed and completed her. Over the rails and 
through snowy fields pricked in black by desolate fences, 
she was going, she and her son, to Grand Forks. 


[295] 








PART THREE 






CHAPTER XXI 


IDEAS 

I 

h 

‘'I’ll go on now, then.” Ed crushed his cigarette on his 
lunch plate. “But you come before one, won’t you?” 

“I’ll be there on time, don’t worry,” Arlie answered. 

“We don’t want to miss any time. Always on the dot, 
that’s us. We’ll get the jump on the other boys right 
off. A hell of a lot they know about picture shows. 
Heard Bunchie Mudge was talking about running day¬ 
light shows. Some new dodge he’s heard of and thinks 
it’ll work. I read about it—not long ago it was. But 
say! even if it would work that’s all Bunchie knows! 
Daylight movies! Why, that’s what gets ’em, the dark. 
You don’t want no more’n moonlight inside. Show your 
pictures in daylight and no one’d come but blind men. 
Nobody’d believe in ’em. What you want to do is to 
make ’em think they’re dreaming. That’s where the per¬ 
fume and the music comes in. Everything soft and 
dreamy. ‘At the Isis Nothing’s Like Home Except You 
—and You Forget Yourself.’ Christ, I wish I could use 
some slogan like that! . . . Daylight movies ... oh 
hell! 

“Where you want your light,” he added, after a mo¬ 
ment’s reflection, “is right where we got it on the Isis: 
out in front. That’s the place for the big blaze. They 
flock to that sign like bugs. Look what the light did for 
the old Bijou—only good thing about it. You could see 

[299] 


it the other end of Main Street. But when you get 
inside—then nothing more’n enough to get 'em seated. 
And if some guy wants to hold his best girl’s hand, or 
stick his elbow in her ribs, why no one knows it but 
her. . . . Not that you want a bad name for your house. 
Don’t pay, any way you take it. You got to remember 
the ministers.” 

“Did you get the posters up this morning?” 

“Sure. Good job, too. Twenty-four sheets, some of 
it. They’ll fall heavy for this war stuff. . . . Sort of 
hate to make money on war stuff, too.” 

“Why, Ed! Why?” 

“Oh, fellows killing each other off and here I sit on 
my pants over in America—all of us, for that matter, 
having jimjams; and some of us rake in the dollars show¬ 
ing pictures of the poor nuts hopping out of the 
trenches.” 

“But you’re not worse’n any one else. It isn’t our 
fight.” 

“No . . . well, that’s right too, I guess. . . . But I 
got to go. You be along quick, and say,”—he stood with 
his hand on the doorknob—“maybe you better take the 
other side of the street. You know . . . and not seem 
to come from the same side even. Of course, it ain’t 
necessary, if you don’t want to.” 

“No,” she answered. “I don’t think I do.” 

He started to reply, but instead closed the door be¬ 
hind him. She saw that his face was thoughtful as he 
passed the window on the outer balcony, from which one 
descended by an outside stairway to the street. She 
looked back at the rooms: the long combined dining- and 
living-room in which she sat, with a door opening into 
the bedroom, and a door into the hall, which in turn 
opened on the outer platform. The bathroom was at 
the end of the hall. “Mighty convenient,” Ed had urged. 
“Only three blocks to the Isis.” But the vacant store- 

[300] 


room below still vexed her; she wanted people in it, com¬ 
ing and going. It would be less lonely. 

2 

This was the first time since they had been in Grand 
Forks that they had not gone to the Isis together in the 
afternoon, she to sell tickets and he to take them at the 
door, and generally to superintend. She had enjoyed 
those walks, intervals as they were of hope and quiet 
in the day’s growth of duties and fatigues, for as they 
walked Ed became less talkative, never schemed, and was 
willing to discuss their personal selves a little, and to 
look forward to a bungalow on the outskirts of town, 
an automobile, a maid, books, and not only to the chain 
of “movie palaces” he was already talking about. 

Now the walks had vanished in obedience to his counsel 
of perfection. “You got to have a pretty girl in the box 
office,” he had insisted. “If I’m not pretty enough, Ed,” 
she had answered, “maybe we could hire some one and I 
—I could learn to run the machine, maybe.” Wherupon 
he had explained that she hadn’t “got him,” that he hadn’t 
meant for a minute that she wasn’t pretty, but that only: 
“Well, a man likes to have a pretty girl waiting on him 
rather than some pimple-face. When I was in Sioux 
City I used to go to a dairy lunch that had a girl behind 
the counter that had a pair of eyes and a neck with a curl 
on it, well, it was like that there musical moment on the 
victrola. When she left I quit going there. And if I’d 
heard she was married maybe I woulda quit anyway. 
Not all guys maybe, but me. And any man’s going 
to do just that.” Then, ten minutes later, “If we go to¬ 
gether, everybody’ll get to know we’re married, and—” 

“But what difference would it make?” 

“All the difference in the world. Even if a man 
knows absolutely there’s nothing doing he likes to think 

[ 301 ] 


there might be—that there’s a chance—for some one, 
if not for him; and maybe him.” 

And so, on this first day of the new schedule, Ed had 
preceded her. 

She didn’t like it. She had much preferred the old 
arrangement; and in addition, while she felt no special 
repugnance at, but rather a secret interest in, being an 
invulnerable bait, she did not like to think that Ed could 
so early detach her from himself for even so short a 
period. And it had not been unpleasant to think that 
she might be pointed out as the wife of the new pro¬ 
prietor of the Isis. 

With the lunch dishes washed she led Gerald across the 
hall to the smaller apartment of Mrs. Gelke, from whom 
they rented their rooms. Since the storeroom below was 
vacant Mrs. Gelke had been quite willing to obtain a little 
money for the care of Gerald, afternoons and nights, 
while Arlie was at work. She led a taciturn, dark ex¬ 
istence in her rooms, bright only with the potted geran¬ 
iums and the rich, glossy green of rubber plants in her 
south windows. Before Gerald’s coming the plants had 
absorbed her, now Gerald was taking their place. A 
widow without children, she was reorganizing her life 
about the care of Gerald. Early she had persuaded Arlie 
to buy cloth, which she had made up into neat garments. 
They had been unnecessary—Gerald’s grandmother had 
outfitted him lavishly—but the cost had been small and 
Mrs. Gelke insistent. When Gerald grew tired Mrs. 
Gelke rocked him to sleep, and then lay on the bed be¬ 
side him. Often when he was not tired she would persist 
in rocking him until he dozed. Several times Arlie had 
tip-toed in to find Gerald asleep and Mrs. Gelke straight 
and peaceful by his side. 

Having left Gerald Arlie descended the stairs, pen¬ 
sively letting go of her eyes until they focussed on some 
indefinite point beyond the surface of wood and cement 

[ 302 ] 


flowing dully beneath her motion—on some point in the 
gray inane beyond the row of dirty-eyed two- and three- 
story buildings that rose before her on the front of space. 
The buildings had always been that way. So they would 
always be, and as they grew into definition before her, 
lessening down the brick street in insipid variety, she 
no longer saw them but heard them—reiterating broken, 
cacophonous phrases, as if a phonograph were rounding 
in the same groove of a record. 

At the dingy stucco front of the Isis she turned in, 
placed her coat and hat by Ed’s, and took her place at 
the window. For a time few came, and she looked over 
a fresh copy of the “Isis Screen.” This was a four page 
leaflet of gossip of coming pictures, moving picture 
stars, and a question-and-answer department for 
which Ed complied both questions and answers on Sun¬ 
day mornings, urging her to frame questions. “Just 
ask anything,” he would say; “anything you feel sorta 
curious about.” Two or three times a day he would open 
the question-box he had set up, but so far he had found 
no inquiries. When Arlie wondered whether the leaflet 
were worth the expense, he replied only: “Don’t judge 
the Isis by the Rex and the Garden and the Strand. 
They couldn’t stand the expense, no. But it’s going to 
place the Isis, see?” 

She had argued no more. Besides, his methods were 
“getting results,” and night after night when she counted 
the cash and announced the total, Ed would smile as if 
the sum were exactly the increase he had expected. 

3 

They were late in reaching home that night, and when 
Arlie had brought Gerald to his own bed and returned 
to the “big room” Ed had bent his head upon his arms 
folded upon the table. 


[303] 


“Tired, Ed? You better turn in.” 

He raised a slow face to look at her stupidly, until a 
broad, quiet smile reanimated him, and a childish, wistful 
look came into his eyes. “Dog tired, girl,” and he shook 
his head slowly, seeming to answer some other question 
she had not heard. 

“You work too hard. You don’t need to do all these 
things. Take it slower. We’re doing all right.” 

“I got to work, Arl. No other way. It’s our big 
chance. But I’m all in tonight. Guess I won’t sit up 
any longer.” 

When he had gone—he always seemed ponderous to 
her when he was tired—she still waited by the table, see¬ 
ing herself getting breakfast in the morning, and doing 
housework before she went to the Isis. Yet she could 
not deny Ed the superfluities she was providing for him 
with her work and the allowance. He needed them to 
play with. A time might come, and would, when she 
could have a house again, sell no more tickets, and ap¬ 
pear married as well as be married. A time would come. 

For the present she was sufficiently married. Indeed 
there were moments when she felt a pale and vanishing 
sense of polyandry and was haunted by past moments. 
At dinner on Sunday there had risen from her plate 
some wayward odor of another year, momentarily re¬ 
creating the dining-room in Finley, the round table and 
its heavy silver. She had looked up expecting to meet 
Herb’s face and to speak to him. Ed had been smiling 
at her in prelude to a new idea. The bare table asserted 
its squareness, the whole room instantly developed its 
barren and too solid individuality. Her whole identity 
wavered. 

“They say that Bunchie Mudge—” he had begun. 
“What’s the matter?” 

“Oh, nothing,” she gasped. “I—just felt a little faint.” 

[304] 


Herb, where was he? She had mislaid him, but where? 
And why Ed ? 

“I thought you were going to faint,” he said. “Sure 
you’re all right?” 

“Yes, sure. What was it you were going to say about 
iBunchie ?” 


4 

As the months developed their relationship, she found 
Ed drawing from her a tenderness she had never known 
for Herb; she wanted to tend him, and took far better 
care of his colds, which were frequent, than he did him¬ 
self. Indeed, he never seemed to know he had a cold, 
and when informed that he must wrap up more carefully 
or take a laxative would blankly ask why. “Say, guess I 
have, all right,” he would answer. “Where are those 
pills ?” 

She was fond of his fondness for Gerald, whose 
Christmas he had made notable; even now, in the spring, 
he would frequently bring home some bright trifle to add 
to the already well stocked basket of broken dolls and 
playthings. 

Her tenderness dominated now—after the first months. 
She had found in their marriage a delicious humiliation, 
and if no more the abandon that had come in January— 
wild with a cold of newness, strangeness, becoming in¬ 
stantly and ecstatically familiar—she did take a pervasive 
comfort in what became a ministration. Yet a fear was 
spreading in her that this might cease to be enough. It 
was to preserve this sense of service that she more metic¬ 
ulously extended her care for him, as if each collar and 
shirt laid out and pan of shaving water set on the gas 
plate were another charm performed against the vivifica¬ 
tion of that fear. The fear came to her only as an un¬ 
easiness, and as an impulse to escape it, to obliterate it, 

[305] 


by one more minutia of service. A blind, furtive weav 
ing of hands. 


5 

It was this sense of an obligation she was paying bit 
by bit that made it easier for her to walk alone to the 
theatre; but as spring accelerated its tempo so that its 
presence was melodious even amid the brick walls and 
pavements that framed her life, she began to enjoy the 
walk for itself, and for its special and poignant loneliness 
that she could find at no other time. . . . She would im¬ 
agine herself free and unmarried, and try to find herself 
in an unknown city, feeling its manifold, wayward tug- 
gings, its throb and hum of a wide power—as she had 
felt when first alone in Des Moines. Each noon she at¬ 
tempted to paint with an alien color the persistent pave¬ 
ment and buildings, carefully holding them out of the 
focus of familiarity . . . but they would break through 
as their immitigable selves, and she was once more Arlie 
Gelston, Arlie Shuman, Arlie Somers, going to her ticket 
selling at the Isis, in Grand Forks, Iowa. 

Then the effort and even the memory of the effort 
ceased: it was too hot—in the street and at home. It was 
hot even in the ticket booth of the Isis, though there Ed 
had rigged an electric fan, out of sight, so that she might 
present an appearance of breezy, youthful coolness. 
(He had taken the idea from some moving picture 
journal.) “And don’t be too particular about your hair,” 
he had advised. “Let a little of it blow. What we want 
to tell ’em is that it’s cool at the Isis, cooler’n anywhere 
in town.” She agreed and did her best to look the part, 
even when the fan drove at her only a nervous stir of 
warmth. 


6 

On several occasions he had watched her as she passed 

[306] 


his office window, she realized one fall day—the thin 
young man with the pale forehead, heavy glasses, and 
long chin. She would be more observant tomorrow, she 
decided, and was: his chair was tipped against his desk, 
swung around to give him a view of the street along 
which she came. His newspaper he was too obviously 
not reading. She looked at him directly, his eyes 
wavered, and he bent to his reading. The next day, 
though in the same position, he did not look up; but 
when he bought his ticket at the Isis that night their 
eyes met, Arlie fumbled the change, and the gaze of 
each swung away at the same instant. 

This brought her back to her earlier endeavor. Iso¬ 
lated she began to walk up the street at the end 
of the noon hour, trying to shake off all contacts of life, 
to be fresh and virginally young. She had disliked this 
interest at first, for she had failed to find any appeal in 
the weakness of his face, his shy brown eyes. As the 
days passed, however, the brief contact of their glances 
was wanted; it sent into each a formless meaning that 
lay—in Arlie—uncoded, untranslated, but tangible. 

As summer passed and fall became bleak and dull with 
the approach of winter he came every night to the Isis, 
seeing some pictures two and three times. That was 
in itself a confession, though it was never worded: al¬ 
ways he pushed his money across the glass with one 
finger upraised to signal his desire for one ticket, and as 
he took the change—there was always change—a glance 
flickered between them and he went on. 

One night when long, cold winds fought and tumbled 
up the street he mumbled something about the weather. 
Arlie smiled in answer, and spoke a word herself on the 
next night. Occasionally thereafter he would chat for 
a moment about the pictures, what was coming and what 
was good—until Arlie put a stop to it herself. 

She had gone in after closing the ticket window to 

[307] 


watch the film, seating herself in the back row near a 
radiator. Ed was at the piano, where he often went at 
the beginning of the last reel to play the remaining pic¬ 
tures as he thought they ought to be played. Tonight the 
piano girl had waited. With constant nods and great ex¬ 
pressiveness he was talking to her, glancing at the pic¬ 
tures, and following with improvisations and medleys the 
movements on the screen. The girl—Seraphine Hough¬ 
ton, a compact brunette—was listening attentively to his 
instruction. Then the film vanished from the screen to 
let its square white eye glow blankly for a moment. The 
few remaining in the Isis departed, but Ed and the girl 
staid on, and he played snatches from this and that. 
“See ?” he said, turning to her. She nodded. His voice 
had boomed out uncannily near and large in the empty 
house. Arlie heard the operator descending the stairs, 
and grew impatient for Ed to come. She was about to 
call out to him to hurry when she saw them standing and 
Ed helping Seraphine on with her coat. What they were 
saying Arlie could not distinguish, and did not try to, 
until with a suppressed gasp she sat up. Ed had put 
his arm about Seraphine’s shoulder and was coming up 
the aisle. That much she could make out even though the 
orchestra lights were dim. They did not see her where 
she sat, but as they approached the dim light shed from 
the rear Arlie saw his arm slip away and heard him advis¬ 
ing her. “You can’t take a chance like that, Miss 
Houghton. It won’t do. You mustn’t get sick now. 
You’re the only girl in town who can play the pictures 
anywhere near right.” They had passed into the 
“foyer.” Seraphine was saying good-night, and Ed 
strode back down the aisle to switch off the lower lights 
and lock the exit door. Softly Arlie went out—out into 
the street, and when beyond the direct glare of the arc- 
light near the Isis, ran on into the cold darkness of the 
winter night. 

[308] 


‘‘Why didn’t you wait?” Ed asked when he came in. 
“I looked all over for you.” 

“I was tired. I didn’t want to wait for you.” 

“But why not? I sorta missed you. I wanted to 
talk.” 

“I’ll bet!” 

“Why Arlie, what’s the matter with you?” 

“Nothing.” 

“Then why talk that way ?” 

She guarded her silence with tight lips; it should speak 
for her. 

“Wha’d’ you mean, Arlie . . . I . . .” 

“Yes, you wanted to talk to Seraphine, and hold her a 
while and love her up. O my God! how could you, Ed ?” 

“Could you what?” 

“Love her up, kiss her.” 

“I didn’t.” 

“But you did. I saw you.” 

“You saw me. Where? Then you — where were 
you ?” 

“Oh, then—you, then—you. . . . Then you didn’t go 
home?” she mocked. “No, I didn’t. And I saw quite 
enough, I can tell you.” 

“But what?” 

“I saw you put your arm around her, for one thing, 
coming up the aisle.” 

“Oh . . . you didn’t see anything else though.” 

“That was enough.” 

“Yes, hell yes! But Arlie—no, look at me. That’s 
absolutely all there was. I swear to God it was. You 
didn’t see anything more because that’s all there ever was. 
I admit ... I lost my head, for a minute, and pretended 
to be fatherly and all that, and tell her to be careful of 
her cold. But that’s all, Arlie, that’s absolutely all.” 

“But ‘all’ is too much. I’m through, and that’s all, 
too.” 


[ 3 ° 9 ] 


“You’re not through. Look here. I know men, and I 
know you, and I know myself, and I’ll take my oath, 
Arlie, that that’s the worst you can expect from me. 
Honest, that’s the worst. I admit I still like a pretty 
ankle, or a good eye. That’s what got me with you, 
your eyes and your ankles. First, I mean. I couldn’t 
love you so much if I couldn’t see a pretty ankle. It 
ain’t no little love I’m giving you. It’s all I got, Arlie, 
all I got. Don’t you see?” 

“Yes, I see perfectly, all you got—left.” 

“Listen, suppose . . . suppose you were carrying a 
glassful of water—full up and swelling over the edge. 
Suppose you could carry it without slopping a little over, 
now and then? Well, I’m full up—and all love for you, 
carrying it to you always. Only a little slopped over, 
that’s all. . . . No, listen to me, Arlie. Don’t go . . . 
Arlie!” 

In a daze she undressed. He came after a few min¬ 
utes to sit on the edge of the bed, staring fixedly, inanely 
at the floor. “I know I been a fool,” he said finally, and 
then talked on while Arlie, with her back to him, longed 
to turn over and draw him down to a kiss of for¬ 
giveness; and yet she was too hurt, too mindful of Ser- 
aphine and what Seraphine would be thinking of her, 
and too intent also on the suspense of tasting Ed’s be¬ 
wilderment, repentance, pain to do as her impulse was in¬ 
sisting. At a mention of Seraphine’s name she writhed 
with chagrin and tortured pride; and quickly reached 
back to taste her husband’s pain again. “You’d better 
come to bed,” she dully told him. “It’ll do you no good 
to talk.” 

He undressed and lay beside her, silent for hours. 
The night muttered distantly. Separately they endured 
until morning. 

They dressed in silence, she prepared breakfast with- 

[ 3 1 ®] 


out a word, and, though she saw that he wanted to talk, 
let him go in silence. Then as she worked she raged" 
needing deeply the reconciliation they had missed. 

She was free, she reflected as she went to work, to 
make the most of the pale young lawyer; yet when he 
stopped for a moment that evening, having come after 
the first rush, she only said to him: “Would you mind 
telling my husband when you go in that I want to see 
him a minute?” 

“Oh . . . yes. . . . Which is your husband, the mars 
at the door?” 

She nodded. It had been as she suspected; he had 
thought her unmarried; she had undeceived him, and he 
would stop no more. Nor did he. 

When Ed put his head in at the back of the booth she 
turned to him with a smile and touched his hand; the 
sheathed look left his face. 

“I just wanted to tell you, Ed,” she whispered, “that 
I love you.” 

“Sure ?” 

“Sure.” 

His hand went to the switch on the wall, darkness 
flooded the booth and lobby. She was drawn by strong 
arms from her stool, was held, kissed, and restored to her 
upright position. The light leapt back. Ed had gone. 

7 

She waited for him that night; and leaving the em¬ 
ployees to close the Isis, he led her away early. “Let’s 
get something hot to eat,” he said. “I’m hungry.” 

While they waited for their chocolate he criticized the 
operator. “Three times this week he’s showed them the. 
white screen. He can’t understand at all why he 
shouldn’t. Just laughs when I tell him we got to keep 

[311] 


'up the allusion. ‘Nothing on earth destroys the allu¬ 
sion like a white screen,’ I tell him. About once more, 
though, and he goes. Wouldn’t you say so?” 

“I suppose. I hate to see any one fired, though.” 

“Sure, I hate to fire any one, too. But that boy! 
Why, he’s not even an operator. He’s just a cranker. 
’‘Ain’t you got no more pride,’ I said to him, ‘than to call 
yourself an “operator”? What I got to have is a Pro¬ 
jectionist—some one with a profession, not just a damn’ 
trade. The Isis’ll help you,’ I said. ‘Send for a pro¬ 
jection book tonight. And get a lens chart. Now take 
that shutter, for instance: it cuts out too much light. 
We got to get more illumination on the screen. Write to 
that man Dickinson on the Motion Picture Universe and 
tell him your troubles. I give you a month,’ I said, ‘and 
if you ain’t making them pictures damn’ near talk by 
then, why you’ll be talking to the streets,’ I said. ‘Any 
wop can be an operator, but it takes a gentleman and a 
scientist and an artist to be a projectionist. You play 
with light and shadows,’ I said. ‘You work your ma¬ 
chine, but you gotta love your machine too, so you can 
make all Iowa drink dreams and come back crying for 
more.’ 

“He just looked at me like a dying fish. I’m a fool to 
give him even a month. Why, ten Chinese centuries 
wouldn’t bring that guy up to be even an operator. Not 
to speak of a projectionist. Hell!” 

The chocolate and crackers came. 

. . . “And I think maybe by next fall we can put a real 
stage in and run some vaudeville acts and maybe a little 
comedy now and then. Say!” Stirring the chocolate he 
looked at her to see if she were going to catch. There 
was a pressure of words forming behind his smiling lips. 

“But we fill the house now, without it.” 

His eyes shifted. “Sure, but we could charge more, 
see? And I don’t know any reason the opera house 

[312] 


should have any monopoly on that stuff. Do ’em good to 
have a little competition.” 

“Well, yes, if we come out all right on it.” 

“We’ll come out all right. Look what we’re doing 
now! Say, if only I could buck Bunchie Mudge and 
close up his damn’ opera house. Maybe I can beat him 
down, anyway, so he’ll have to give it up. The boys, 
are beginning to get wise that some one’s come to town I ” 1 

Going home she thought again of what Seraphine 
would be thinking. She had downed everything but 
that. It was not until Ed grasped her arm more tightly 
that she knew she had drawn away from him. “What’s 
the matter?” he asked. 

“Nothing ... I don’t know.” She looked up to the 
cold brilliance of the stars, riding in a depth of absolute 
blue cold. Below, about her, winds bleak with thaw 
were blowing up harsh streets on people who could 
never be at peace among their inconsequential furies, 
their minute despairs. As they ascended the stairs she: 
shivered again, and raced on ahead. 


[3 I 3] 


CHAPTER XXII 


THE NEW ISIS 

I 

The redecoration of the Isis, the building of a small 
stage, the installation of new seats and boxes, the parti¬ 
tioning of a “ladies’ rest room,” and other matters of re¬ 
modelling were accomplished during the summer of 1916, 
and Ed began to book vaudeville acts for the fall and 
winter. All the money the Isis had made, all they had 
saved, was put into this remodelling; the rest Ed found 
he could borrow. True, little had been saved: lavish 
advertising, plate glass mirrors for the miniature foyer, 
special carpets for the aisles, drinking fountains, ticket 
machines, lobby frames, new projectors—a hundred and 
one articles—had already consumed the profits. But now 
much of this was to be scrapped and new equipment 
ordered. 

As a consequence they were more dependent than ever 
on the monthly check from the Shumans. Use had long 
ago made this acceptable to Arlie, and repaying the Shu¬ 
mans was a dream that followed Ed’s “chain of movie 
palaces.” At first she had cashed the check through the 
Isis, but now she opened an account with admail bank 
across the town, giving her name as Arlie G. Shuman. 
She had hesitated at doing this, but decided it was better 
to have the local bank clerks suspicious, if they should 
«ver know her, than to have the Shumans suspect the 

[314] 


constant endorsement of the Isis. The check was too 
necessary to be lost. 

But changing her account simply reshaped her fears. 
She imagined the cashier of the bank writing to inform 
Mr. Shuman that Arlie G. Shuman was really Mrs. Ed¬ 
ward Somers, wife of the proprietor of the Isis. She 
saw Mr. Shuman receiving the letter. She read a 
hundred times his curt note to her, often demand¬ 
ing the return of all the money given her since her mar¬ 
riage to Ed. Perhaps, though, they would just stop 
sending the checks; she hoped that would be the way. 
But instead of walking over to deposit the check she 
mailed it. 

Often her worries would give place to brief filming 
pictures of her life with Herb and his family. Marriage 
with Ed had passed beyond the sense of service, of ob¬ 
ligation fulfilled, to a kindling of renewed desire; and 
had sunk to indifference, to listless functioning. Her fa¬ 
tigues were no longer innerved but enervated: hours of 
the day were not toned with memory or dimmed anticipa¬ 
tion. The maturity of her relation with Ed had passed ; 
her life hung, loosely irritating, beyond. Her marriage 
with Herb had been too green, she felt, too youthful. 
Herb had been changing, and because of that he had 
never been real; intimacy had never been final. Through 
wordless images of contrast she worked toward this-,, 
though once as she swept the rooms she grasped the 
broom tightly and cried out, “O Herb, I never knew you 
even!” 

She did know Ed, though her perceptions blurred and 
he became a misted figure walking in brown rooms over 
an empty store—life perched upon nothing. But that 
was her own life. Reality was the jumps, the false 
starts, the jet of memory in the middle distance: Mrs. 
Shuman’s face at the dinner table; Mrs. Gardewine in 
the kitchen; and Mrs. Shuman and Gloria again exchang- 

[315] 


ing looks of common appraisal, whose significance she 
caught only now, after years, as she swept the rooms. 

Again and again she recalled her “breaks,” and her 
walk to Bright Valley in midwinter. All such things 
gave the Shumans a bitter power over her. She twisted, 
trying to wrench herself physically away from the in¬ 
vulnerably persistent gleamings of those days. The 
harder she worked the more fiery and dizzy memory be¬ 
came. “Herb liked me, anyway,” she would tell herself, 
and press the year at Finley for comfort—only to find 
its yield meagre and evanescent, and not at all of the 
luminous irritant fibre of Bright Valley, shreds and 
colored teasing filaments of whose tapestry glowed sep¬ 
arately, and dissolved and reiterated themselves in crazed 
disharmony. 

Despairingly she would try to put all this out of sight, 
out of mind, and then would fall back before its re¬ 
advance as exhausted as if she had been tugging at pon¬ 
derous weights. In one effort at release she tried to im¬ 
agine the redecorated walls of the Isis, but the Isis per¬ 
sisted as its old self, however many designs she threw 
upon its surfaces. 

She sought relief in Gerald. Anticipating this vaca¬ 
tion she had expected to take him to the city park, to 
play with him at home, and to tell him stories as she 
worked, or to sit with him by the window 1 and weave 
stories out of the sunsets framed by the balcony posts. 
In the intervals of ticket selling she had often begun 
those stories, thinking of the time when the sunset itself, 
which she had seen seldom in Grand Forks, would help 
lier to complete what too often faded into the routine 
of her work. But Gerald much preferred the fenced 
and vacant lot next to the building, or the maverick patch 
of trees and grass behind. When he came in, too, he in¬ 
variably sought Mrs. Gelke first, and was brought home 
to meals only with difficulty. 

[316] 


Was she going to lose all hold of him? It was dis¬ 
turbing. . . . And the more Ed talked about “the New 
Isis” the more unreal the structure became. Not even 
the coming of the new seats, “the most comfortable in 
the state,” stirred any desire in her to see the triumphant- 
result. Ed had rushed home to tell her of their arrival. 
“They’re bringing the last load of ’em now,” he panted,, 
urging her to come. “No,” she answered, “I’m to wait. 
You wanted it yourself. It wouldn’t do. You just trot 
along and have a good time, dear.” In his enthusiasm 
Ed had forgotten their agreement: that she was not to go 
near the Isis until it had been completed and the last light 
installed. Thus she was to get the full effect at once and 
give Ed an unbiased criticism. “No one else will,” he 
had said. “I’ll get nothing but bouquets and lemons? 
from them. What I want is the truth.” 

When he had gone she recalled her work in the lonely 
Bijou, the scratched seats and long benches in front, the 
endless dusting, which still had been a refuge. . . . 
Herb came in and went out, came in and went, sat talk¬ 
ing to her while she dusted. She shook herself to brush 
away this illusion and was grateful for a mere tasteless 
blank of mind, which she drank as something refresh¬ 
ingly cool as spring water. 

Slow steps outside the door, the door opened, and she 
looked into Herb’s face, saw his thin lips begin to smile, 
saw the subtle curve of his forehead . . . but it was all so 
small, and distortedly near the floor. Her own eyes glim¬ 
mered up at her. 

“I wanna piece of brenbuller,” it said. 

“Oh, Gerald . . . you.” She sat down. “Come here. 
My, but your dress is dirty! What have you been do- 
mg? 

“Wan’ brenbuller.” 

She caught him to her, hugging his young solidity 
until he leaned back roaring with laughter. Through. 

[ 317 ] 


tears she joined him. “You laugh like a cry,” he told 
her, clinging to hei leg while she spread his bread and 
butter. 

“I know it, darling. I can’t help it. But O Gerald!” 
and she shook him by the shoulders— “I love you, my 
baby, I love you! You’re all I got, you’re all I got! 
And you’ll stay with me, won’t you?” 

“Um-hmm,” he promised, with a full mouth. 

“And you’ll stay with me now, too, won’t you?” 

“Um-hmm, but,”—he swallowed fast—“go see Gelke 
Erst.” He went off, dropping crumbs as he went. 

2 

In the morning she lay watching Ed, who slept heavily. 
Soon he would wake, eager as Gerald for his playthings. 
. . . Bier gaze wavered . . . whiff of dream. . . . He 
was looking at her with sleep-cleared eyes, about which 
played the old lights she had loved him for. “What you 
thinking of ?” he asked. “That funny look you get in your 
eyes, I don’t get it sometimes.” 

She laughed. “I haven’t any funny look in my eyes. 
Think about your own. You’re still dreaming.” 

While shaving he announced, “Isis ought to be finished 
by next week.” 

“Yes?” She was not interested, and her last word to 
him was a snapping command to be home in time for 
lunch. 

Why was it he had become so childish to her, and why 
must she be thinking all the time of Herb and his family, 
when at first she had revelled in having left all that be¬ 
hind for the comfort of commonness, loose clothes, and 
hair and nails—Gloria be damned—as she wanted them. 
At Bright Valley she had been forced into a life she had 
not known. People’s thoughts were important in that 
life. She had left Bright Valley because of what Gloria 


and Mrs. Shuman thought. At home in Coon Falls what 
you thought and what you saw were far less important 
than what you had to do, and had to do with. Again she 
was living such a life, it seemed, feeling at home in it, 
and was no longer afraid and insecure, as at Bright 
Valley. 

Besides, a time was coming. . . . She and Ed would 
have money of their own, and then what they saw and 
thought might be important again, and shape lives. 
Lives might so become beautiful, in themselves. The 
trouble with the Shumans was the tightness of their lives; 
the thoughts of others had shaped them, not their own. 
Even their books had bound them. All they had was 
somewhere to stand, a place to start. Once, on a ride 
with Herb, when the feeders had charged up the corn- 
walled roads, she had felt a sunlit fullness of well-being; 
and beyond that there had grown another brightness, 
changing and repatterning itself, for a moment only. . . . 
The books might have led on to that, but Mrs. Shuman 
had always read to keep up with the magazines, and now 
. . . there were only moving picture journals and no 
time. The gain was being free of both Bright Valley 
and Coon Falls. If it was a gain? 

If she had staid in Coon Falls . . . she might have 
married Ray Jarvis and have been a grocery clerk’s wife. 
But wouldn’t she have become more intimate with Ed, 
and have come to care for him, even in Coon Falls? If 
it hadn’t been for her money he would have gone back to 
the Bijou and Tritchler. In any way she might have 
lived he would have been inescapable . . . unless Herb 
had lived too . . . unless he hadn’t been so jealous that 
he drove that rabbit, all because of nothing. She 
stopped. 

Because of nothing? 

Doors opened on frantic heat; she closed her eyes on 
its light. 

[ 3 T 9] 


“Yes, yes . . . because of nothing! Because of noth¬ 
ing? Herb had been jealous of Ed, and she had married 
Ed. Had she cared for him even then? and even in the 
Bijou days? She could remember only his eyes, his 
glistening hair, his hands, supple and alive. 

Herb must have been right after all, and have seen 
beyond her protests to what was growing in her. Yet 
she could recall no single thought, she could not remem¬ 
ber even having remembered him. Perhaps this was why 
Herb persisted, an unreal but unvanishing ghost. Surely, 
she had thought, other women who remarried have not 
been so haunted. She herself would never be troubled 
by Ed. If he died life would be hard, and lonely as the 
street at midnight; but if she nevertheless married again 
he would not break her dreams. He would stay dead. 

3 

“Just try one of them seats. Go on, sit down,” Ed 
urged. “Comfortable, ain’t they ?” 

Arlie looked around at the “New Isis,” at the walls 
covered with golden designs involved about oval paintings 
of no depth, given largely to blue hills, perpendicular 
lakes, and trees of amorphous foliage. 

“It’s fine, Ed, it’s fine. My, you can be proud!” 

Ed sat down, too, and looked it all over again. “Yep, 
it’s the niftiest thing in this part of Iowa, if I do say it. 
And these seats. Gosh, I’ll be coming in myself to sit in 
’em. Notice they don’t squeak at all. Quiet as a cat. 
. . . What d’you think of those pictures, though? I 
didn’t want ’em myself. It’s like having t r/ em pa.nted 
on the walls in a picture gallery. Strikes me the only 
place for a picture in a theatre is on the screen. Then 
you concentrate on it. But Schulz said people like to 
look at ’em in intermissions, and I let him go ahead. 
What 1 wanted was just that design. That’s good, that 

[320] 


is. It keeps your eye busy if you want to, and you’re no 
tireder after looking at it the thousandth time than you 
was the first. I wanted it all over; but I paid him for 
knowing his business, and I suppose he does. Wha’d’- 
you think?” 

“Why, I think it’s all right. I kinda like the pictures.” 

“Do you? Say, that’s good. I’ll admit I was wor¬ 
ried. They’re so damn’ still, and this is a moving picture 
show. Now you get the motion all right in that conven¬ 
tional thing. It keeps up the idea of motion even in an 
intermission. It’s all laid out in front of you, only 
frozen like. I was afraid you might think Shulz was 
wrong though. I hope I ain’t right this time; but I don’t 
know.” 

She must say something; he had stopped. He must 
not analyze more. At any moment he might break the 
spell of self-deception he was weaving and see the truth 
he was so close to, that the pictures were intolerably 
cheap. He must be pr ;tected, “It’s all beautiful, Ed, 
just beautiful, and it’s worth all it’s cost.” 

“D’you think so? Say now, I’m glad.” He got up. 
“No, you stay where you are. I’ll go up and put a film 
through. I want you to pretend you’re seeing a show—• 
just come in, like. Take me just a minute.” 

The lightness of his step up the aisle told her she had 
succeeded again. Presently the pregnant cone of light 
shot out and figures moved across the sunlit screen. 
Obediently Arlie watched them, imagining in the seats a 
vague audience in which she was only one. With all the 
changes it. was easy to detach herself from the past and 
see the Isis for the first time; and it was good, yet it was 
brightly shoddy. 

Some one was in the foyer. She went back to look, 
for no one was supposed to enter until evening. Then 
the “grand reopening’” was to occur “under the Auspices 
of the Federation of Women’s Clubs.” That had been 

[321] 


a master stroke, Ed thought, with the proceeds to go to¬ 
ward fitting out a ward in the new hospital, which was 
to be known—the only compensation Ed had asked—as 
the “Isis Ward.” In addition to the feature film he had 
provided a vaudeville act; the women had procured a 
singer and were selling the tickets at a dollar apiece. Al¬ 
ready the house was sold out, and Arlie would have noth¬ 
ing to do that evening. “It’s a great idea,” Ed had con¬ 
fided to her. “I’ll give these high brows such a good 
time I’ll make fans out of ’em all. I’m going to lead the 
orchestra myself. Believe me, we’ll play those pictures 
tonight like they ought to be played!” 

She found three women in the foyer. Piled at their 
feet were various ferns and flowers. One of the women, 
with gray hair and gleaming eyeglasses, stepped forward. 
“We’ve come with the decorations. The chauffeur’s 
bringing some more in from the car.” 

“Oh yes,” Arlie replied, “I’ll call Mr. Shuman. I’m 
Mrs. Shuman.” 

“I’m Mrs. Hillier. Yes, I wish you would call—Mr. 
Shuman, did you say? I thought it was Somers. . 

But maybe you’re not the proprietor’s wife? I thought 
you were, probably.” 

“I—I’ll call the proprietor. He's Mr. Somers,” Arlie 
stammered, and fled up the stairs. “They’ve come, Ed 
. . . those women with the decorations. They want to 
see you. Go on down.” 

“All right, just a minute. You go down and talk to 

them. I’ll wait till this reel’s out.” 

“No ... I can’t. . . .” She felt faint. 

“Go on down,” he urged. “You ought to meet ’em.” 
She sat silent, unable to move, to speak. “Come on, 

then, ” he said. “Go down with me.” She could only 
gesture at him impatiently, and turn up to him a face 
colorless under the powerful white blaze of the single 
light in the operator’s cell. 

[322] 


Puzzled he went, and she heard his voice, low and in¬ 
gratiating. Through the nearest slot she saw him going 
down the aisle carrying a plant in each arm, and a man 
with other plants following the women, he latter were 
glancing at the pictures and then at each other. On the 
stage they discussed the placing of the decorations in 
voices that were too high. Quietly Arlie slipped out of 
the Isis and went home. Perhaps they wouldn’t think 
of her again, or speak to Ed of his wife. But why had 
she made so utterly foolish a break—not even to know 
her own name! 

When she heard Ed coming up the stairs she lay down 
quickly. He was troubled: “Too damn’ bad for you to 
be sick today!” Feigning a rapid recovery from her in¬ 
digestion after the hot tea and toast he brought her she 
kept up a discussion of the coming evening. There was 
no further mention of her sickness. 


4 

He had insisted that she view the reopening from a 
seat in one of the boxes. She was there early. She 
didn’t know which of the “high brows” would be sitting 
beside her, but she feverishly hoped they would be none 
of the women who had come that morning. The house 
filled gradually. The girl ushers in their new uniforms 
glided back and forth, flopping down seats. A constant 
procession filled the aisles. Then the boxes filled, but 
the women she dreaded meeting, she noted with relief, 
were on the other side. Those about her began com¬ 
menting on the Isis. “Cheap, isn’t it? Such pictures!” 
“I thought this man Somers was a fellow with taste and 
ideas,” a man put in heavily. “He’s an almighty good 
advertiser, anyway. Wish I had him writing copy for 
me.” 

Arlie winced and glowed under the remarks, and wove 

[323] 


them this way and that, trying for something truthful yet 
pleasing to report. So engaged she hardly heard the 
singer or the vaudeville act, which began with Aida and 
ended with ragtime. She lost her way in the film which 
followed, and contented herself with watching Ed’s ac¬ 
tively silhouetted figure in the orchestra pit. His cornet 
crooned to one side of the orchestra, blared at the other, 
and in the fortissimo passages, at an upward foreshort¬ 
ened angle, trumpeted appeal to the galloping horsemen 
on the screen. 

Some of the women crowded about Ed afterwards to 
thank him. “It’s been such a help. We couldn’t have 
done it but for you.” But Ed responded with a face 
whose soberness Arlie could not understand. On the 
way home he was unaccountably taciturn, and instead of 
the hour’s jubilation she had expected, she found only 
moody silence issuing from him, and at last the informa¬ 
tion that he was “dog-tired” and was going to “hit the 
hay.” 

Out of dreams she woke to a vague sense of the room, 
and then of something unusual in the room, hidden in 
darkness, a low stir. It was beside her, it was Ed. She 
bent over him. “Why Ed, you’re crying! . . . What’s 
the matter?” The sobbing stopped and he drew her to 
him till their lips touched in vital contact. Then he 
forced a chuckle. 

“I’m laughing just as much, Arl. At myself, for car¬ 
ing so much. I—oh hell, I’m just disappointed. It 
seems like I can’t stand it.” 

“But what? Tell me.” (Was he in love? Even so, 
if some one had hurt him she would—and she could, now 
—she would help him, even in that.) 

“At the Isis. I thought it was going to be so much, 
and the God damn’ decorators jimmed the whole thing. 
It’s them pictures. I knew they wasn’t right, but I sup- 

[324] 


posed they knew more about their business than I did. 
Hell, they don’t know shucks! Fools, that’s all. Just 
plain damn’ fools . . . and they got all my money.” 

“Don’t feel that way, Ed. Why it’s—it’s beautiful! 
that’s what it is. I heard lots of people say so.” (Why 
couldn’t she keep that false pitch out of her voice ? How 
was it people spoke when they weren’t lying? She’d 
have to listen carefully to her own voice sometime when 
she was telling the truth and trying to get it believed.) 

He was quiet now. 

“Who said so?” he asked presently. 

“Why, I don’t know who they were. People around.” 

“In the boxes?” 

“That’s where I was sitting.” 

“Some of them clubwomen, probably, talking for your 
benefit.” 

“They didn’t know who I was from Adam. Besides, 
Ed, you’re all wore out tonight. It’s been an awful 
drain, today has. You wait to see what the papers say. 
It’s just your nerves now. . . . Here, put your head on 
my arm and go to sleep.” She curled her body close 
to him and stroked his head. 

“I’m a sorta damn’ fool myself, I guess, to care so 
much,” he said after long minutes had lapsed, “but I 
was all wrought up, like you say. I guess I need a 
good sleep.” 

“I’m sure you do, dear.” 

When, after what seemed an hour, he had said no more 
and appeared to be asleep, she drew her arm from under 
him to ease its discomfort, whereupon he shifted to his 
side. Then he had not been asleep. . . . She shouldn’t 
have withdrawn her arm. 

Lying wakeful herself for a long hour, she figured 
out of the night gray patterns of life, into which she 
sought to weave her own, meaningfully. The silence 

[ 325 ] 


overflowed with distant murmurings, life climbed pale 
heights into the dark, scaling insuperable cliffs, and time 
beat on. 

Where was she going, why was she staying, would 
nothing come of it all, and was death the only answer? 
whatever death was. She had used to think of it as 
only a featureless gray entrance to heaven or hell; but 
now, and she could not remember how she came to see it 
so, she no longer believed in heaven and hell as once 
she had. Dreams. Their own shadow and joy thrown 
across interminable chasms, projections on the farthest 
silver creen that fade as the light fades and go out. 

In the heart of the night, in its dark heart, eternal 
muttering, you cried—because some walls had weird 
cheap pictures on them; and you were comforted with 
lies about what people said of them, and went to sleep 
—or didn’t go to sleep, but lay thinking of it all and your 
own cheapness in a cheap world, where you couldn’t find 
things out by staying awake or by going to sleep. Only 
it was easier to sleep. 


5 

In the morning she found Ed seated at the table, cut¬ 
ting from the Grand Forks Gazette a half-column account 
of the reopening of the Isis. “Listen,” he said. 
“How’s this? ‘The Isis has been completely remodelled, 
boxes have been installed and the walls retinted in pleas¬ 
ing designs with mural paintings of rare artistic skill. 
The Schulz and McAlpin Decorating Company of Grand 
Forks had charge of the work.’ And there’s a little edi¬ 
torial about me, too: public spirited and all that sort of 
thing. Want to see it?” Without waiting for an an¬ 
swer he handed her the clipping. 

“That’s fine, Ed; that’s fine. I told you to wait till 
morning.” 

[326] 


“You told me? When? . . . Oh.” A sheepish grin 
crossed his face. “I’s a damn’ fool last night. All wore 
out, I guess. . . . I’ll just stick those in my file, huh? 
A man don’t get an editorial written about him every 
day.” 


[327] 


CHAPTER XXIII 


SUBLIMATION 

I 

“Well, old girl, we’re going to light into ’em now. 
Got our week-ends booked up with the best kind of stuff. 
Say! . . . Want another pancake, Gerald? Throw me 
your plate then. . . . Hey, no! don’t take me so seriously, 
you young devil. Pass it, pass it! . . . And the Kauf¬ 
mans tonight with their song and dance, they’ll go good. 
Always do. I knew Dinky in Sioux City. . . . What 
say we have ’em afterwards for one of those oyster stews 
you make? I’ll have old Jensen send up a couple quarts 
of oysters and a quart of cream. Huh?” 

“Oh—for four people? A pint’s plenty.” 

“Yeh, I know—two oysters to a bowl. No sir, we’ll 
feed ’em right, stuff ’em till they’re gooey and have a lot 
left. Makes a man feel fuller if there’s some left he 
can’t eat.” 

“But, Ed, not a quart of oysters, for a stew for four 
people!” 

“Sure. . . . Then I’ll ask Mat and some girl. He’s 
in town, saw him last night.” 

“All right then. We’ll have quite a little party. 
We’ve never had any one in except Mat once, for that 
Sunday dinner.” 

Ed had always liked Mat—Virgil Matson—a travel¬ 
ling salesman he had known in Sioux City. He was the 

[328] 


one man with whom Ed was really intimate; acquaint¬ 
ances were many, and though he held to the American 
business man’s belief in “joining,” he was not himself a 
“joiner.” Frequently he had admired men who belonged 
to four or five lodges, but his own life was sufficient; 
he belonged to that too avidly, too naively, to be directly 
interested elsewhere. Such sustenance as he required he 
distilled in a Sunday from Virgil Matson’s stories, and 
that essence of association would carry him until Mat 
came to Grand Forks again. 

“What girl we get for him ?” Ed asked. 

Girl ? Seraphine was a girl, a girl with dark hair and 
eyes that were bright in her rosy face. . . . That face 
hung before her, a laughing, bodiless image; then be¬ 
side it was a pallid face of long chin and heavy eye¬ 
glasses, the lawyer. The glances they had given each 
other . . . she had never told Ed; there was nothing to 
tell. Yet she could make it right now by showing again 
her forgiveness, and so sealing it. Something outreach- 
ing, which would gather all the little services into one. 
For weeks, she felt, through the late fall and early win¬ 
ter, she had wanted to do just such a thing, little yet 
heavy with meaning. It was coming now—she was 
lighter in movement and thought. A vague distillation 
of spring, even in February, was running in her blood; 
and that had been making them friends, more than hus¬ 
band and wife. With the gradual pallor of the dawn 
it bad been coming; and so she had sensed it—no more, 
but had strained toward it as toward the arrival of a 
spring beyond sex, yet one filled with its luminous 
delight. 

She and Ed might find a little time for play. There 
must be more than work for which they lived together, 
and more than their escapes into unlit intensities, which 
she did not name but imaged. Play—in which they 
would be free of themselves as man and woman. Sera- 

[329] 


phine would be the sign of their release. “Why not ask 
Seraphine?” she queried. “She’s pleasant.” 

His direct gaze at her broke, but was instantly con¬ 
trolled and resumed, as quick as the flicker in the light 
current. “Oh, I don’t know,” he answered, looking away 
to spear another pancake with his fork, but endeavor¬ 
ing to look away as if he had earned the right, tacitly ad¬ 
mitted, by the steadiness of his gaze; and endeavoring 
also to make everything as natural as if nothing but the 
pancakes were under discussion. “Do you think we’d 
better ask her? She’s ... I don’t know ... I think 
we could get some one better, don’t you?” 

“I don’t know who. Mat would like her, I know he 
would. You get her.” 

“Well, but I won’t ask her till late. Maybe we can 
think of some one else.” 

Arlie smiled. She was glad he was disturbed; that 
made it more satisfying. But she would have to let 
Seraphine know that she knew. That could be done, 
possibly, by a passing question about her cold—with a 
smile, of course. 

Ed, having finished his breakfast, caught Gerald into 
his arms, swung him high, pretended to let him drop, 
caught him with a shout and set him down. Gerald’s 
face was ecstatic and uplifted, pleading for more. 

No—she caught the thought back, choked it—Ed was 
not exultant at having Seraphine come, but at having for¬ 
giveness proved. 

“I’ll toss you too, old girl,” he said, hugging her to 
him, and kissing her laughing, flushed face. “Best old 
young girl in the world, that’s what I say. Gosh, I’m 
glad I got you for a wife. You’re so good to look at, 
Arlie, like a gray flower.” 

“What do you mean, Ed? . . . Maybe you saw that 
gray hair the other day.” 

“Naw, I didn’t see no gray hair! Wouldn’t matter if 

[330] 


I had, though. Gray ain’t the word. . . . Silvery you 
are ... in your eyes. Twilight around ’em always. 
Oh hell! I just love you, kid, and I’m going to make a 
hell of a lot of money for you—for us—and Gerald. 
Only I got to go now. I’ll see Jensen and have him 
send up the oysters and cream. So long!” He kissed 
her and was gone. 

Surely it was not merely because Seraphine was to 
come. . . . She pouted because again shadow had blown 
across the spring of sun and bright wind of her elation. 

In the bedroom, after sending the curtain scuttering 
to the top of the window, she looked at herself in the 
mirror. Gray? Silver-gray? Silvery? But her eyes 
were blue. . . . She retwisted her hair and made it firmer 
with more hairpins. At last she returned to her work, 
singing. As she sang she remembered. Of late she had 
been released from the miserable reiteration of her life 
with the Shumans and Herb. Stray episodes of her 
childhood, bright and translucently shadowed, bubbled up 
through a fresh serenity and went out. It had been as 
if the current of her thought, dammed, were refilling the 
back valleys of her life, touching them with a cool weight¬ 
less water. This morning it had ebbed to those months 
before she had married Herb. In her present serenity 
she did not regret that . . . not even the town of peer¬ 
ing faces. If those heavy months had opened her to 
unnamed malignant presences, they had also let her find 
wordless meanings where she had never found them be¬ 
fore, and much was good. Before her pregnancy she 
had wandered blind, and long fear and brief agony had 
opened her eyes. If she had waked to find the middle 
of the night shapeless and monstrous upon her, it was an 
endurance she paid, as on this morning, for finding the 
world electric, colored, and finely wrought to her mood. 

She had Gerald, she had herself, she had Ed, who was 
more than a man. A man, man, man, man, man—the 

[33 1 ] 


word was only the beating of a gong, meaningless. Ed 
was more -than that. She would pound all words until 
they were broken open to mere husks of sound . . . 
noises. “Love, love, love, love, love”—a lippy humming, 
bees and cool water. She and Ed were beyond love, for¬ 
getful and together; they had shaken away the clutter of 
life and of themselves in an ecstatic release from sex, 
a flying into silver light and a burst of inner heaven . . . 
silver gray. 

She had known such moments—once before she went 
for that starlit, humiliating ride with Herb. Before she 
had gone there had been half an afternoon when even 
housework had been a perfect thing to do; and at a later 
hour, wandering in the garden, her heart had been 
voluptuously melancholy in a withdrawal from de¬ 
sire and love—even as she understood them then— in a 
pleasurable ache of pain that lurked again below her 
happiness. 

. . . The hour in the garden had broken to bristly ir¬ 
ritations, prelude to the ride. But this would not break, 
not yet; she would hold it too carefully, through the day 
and through the days and years. Even if she lost it— at 
least she had known these hours; far apart, yet she had 
known them. 

Jensen’s delivery boy came with two quarts of oysters, 
a quart of cream, and two of milk . . . pure waste, and 
when they were in debt. . . . But no, Ed was an old 
dear, an extravagant old dear, but he should have his 
way. She would give him an oyster stew that he would 
remember, even though he had, of course, forgotten the 
crackers. 


2 

She resolved, early in the day, to enjoy the Kauf¬ 
mans’ act, no matter how bad it was. It would make 
the evening easier afterwards. At first she did enjoy it, 

[332] 


Mrs. Kaufman (Dolores Bendixen on the programme) 
was so big and falsely coy and florid as she ogled the spot¬ 
light from under the rim of a pale blue hat. Kaufman 
darted around her like a barking terrier, his distorted 
derby vibrating on his head in tune to the staccato shuffle 
of his feet. The audience chuckled, Arlie with them. 
She would ask Kaufman later how he managed that 
derby; it would be something to talk about. 

They advanced for a song, and Dolores, with enor¬ 
mous eyes and a screeching metallism in her voice, swung 
her arm with preoccupied violence during a fortissimo 
passage to strike Kaufman across the face. He hobbled 
to one side, weeping broken-heartedly; the song was 
shattered. Dolores, with arms akimbo, glared at him. 
The house grew silent, waiting. . . . Arlie felt a gasp 
of tears start in her. She laughed at herself . . . such a 
fool . . . even in a play you wouldn’t cry at that. What 
could be wrong with her that she was affected by so ap¬ 
parent a prelude to another laugh ? Dolores was close to 
him now, bending over his shoulder, inspecting him, and 
then grimacing at the audience. Kaufman’s sobs re¬ 
doubled, his whole body agitated itself. Dolores grasped 
his shoulder, shook him vigorously, yelled in his ear: 
“Shut up, you’ll wake the baby! What are you crying 
about ?” 

“Because you hit me,” he whimpered. 

“Well, why shouldn’t I ?” 

“But—bu—but you didn’t hit me hard enough.” 

A fuse of laughter started, crackled, went out; it wasn’t 
the line. 

“Didn’t hit you hard enough? What do you mean?” 

“Yu—yu—you never hit me hard enough.” 

A shorter fuse. 

“I never hit you hard enough? Why, Fido, if I hit 
you any harder I’ll kill you. Then I’d be a widow.” 

“That’s it, I want you to be a widow. Oh— oh—oh—” 

[333] 


Elaborately avoiding her he boo-hooed across the stage, 
hiccoughing as he went, his derby bouncing at every hic¬ 
cough : “I want you to be a widow.” 

The fuse crackled this time into a crescendo of cach- 
innations and guffaws that subsided only to be rekindled 
by a girl’s treble giggle. Kaufman and Dolores zig¬ 
zagged to the whitened central brilliance of the stage 
and began their song, I Want You to Be a Widow, in 
which the alternate burdens of “He wants me to be a 
widow” and “I want her to be a widow” finally played 
themselves out, Dolores wept herself off the stage, and 
Kaufman pattered into a clog dance. 

When she returned it was with a shoe very much un¬ 
laced, the strings dangling as she minced along. Cere¬ 
moniously Kaufman began the tying, making difficulties 
that gave him gradual excuses to hitch her skirt to the 
knee. The great calf, distended on his forearm, glis¬ 
tened under the spotlight in a radiance of silk so white 
that it seemed to break into fiery particles of color. 
Kaufman patted the calf, swung its inert length from the 
supported knee, and dropping to the floor, leaving the 
women statuesquely still, adored the calf’s rotund, silken 
immobility. Then he drew up his trouser leg until his 
sock and brilliant red garter were exposed, and assumed 
the same pose as his wife, and also her simper. After a 
plaintive interval he pleaded with the audience: “I’m 
here, too, you know.” 

Arlie lost the sound of her own laughter in what fol¬ 
lowed. “Aw, hell!” Ed was murmuring at her side, 
having just sat down in the only vacant seat left. 
“Dinky ought to know better’n that. Old as the hills, 
that gag is. Funny though, how it gets ’em. Every 
time.” 

“/ never heard it before. Is it old, Ed?” 

“Hell!” 

She had laughed too much; she felt weak, namelessly 

[334] 


depressed, and joined but faintly in the tumultuous ap¬ 
plause at the curtain. “Good of you to fix it so I could 
come in,” she told Ed in the foyer. “Guess I’ll go home 
now and slick things up a bit. Did you get Mat all 
right ?” 

“Sure, we’ll all be up, after the next show.” He hur¬ 
ried away and she pushed into the outgoing crowd, feel¬ 
ing foreign in its pressure. As she walked home the 
light of the stars seemed raw, and their brilliance big 
and lustrous, as if they too were thawing with the win¬ 
ter. The breeze stirring along the street chilled her, 
sheathed her in chill. A homeless chill, that no fire or 
warmth could scale away. She wished, on the gray out¬ 
side stairs, that she had only to go to bed. Why, on this 
particular night, should she have to put the last things 
in order and make an oyster stew? Its ingredients con¬ 
fused themselves with others: she saw a spilling of sugar 
on oysters and thick cream, heard the running of sugar 
on the paper of the sack. . . . Ugh! why that ? It 
would be bad enough anyway. The door slammed itself 
against the wall as if her own hand had been assisted 
by another and stronger one. 

“I hate the Kaufmans!” she cried. “I hate the Kauf¬ 
mans !” Fat calf and thin calf, cow eye and pig eye, yel¬ 
low-haired old fool and dirty, yapping dog of a man. . . . 
How could Ed ever have stood them, or have bought two 
quarts of oysters for them? Any day the allowance 
might stop. Their whole act was disgusting. . . . What 
if you did laugh, you cried too. Only the clog dance 
had been good. You wanted it to keep on and on—a 
gay, interminable pattern of sound that fitted something 
in you with such flat accuracy. The glistening distortion 
of that calf! She became conscious of her own calves, 
hanging like nervous weights. To scream, to kick—how 
could she get rid of the sensation ? In the darkness of 
the kitchenette she fumbled for the light. 

[335] 


3 


“Have another, Mat, and you, Dinky.” Ed was pour¬ 
ing beer from the bottle, and as it foamed over the brim 
of the glass Arlie felt symptoms of nausea rising in her. 
The stew had long ago been eaten, and a big bowl thick 
with oysters was left. Then Ed had produced the beer. 
The fourth bottle was being emptied now. One glass 
had been enough for Arlie, though before she had liked 
beer. “Especially not with an oyster stew,” she had ob¬ 
jected faintly, but Ed had responded, “Who in hell cares? 
This is my party.” With an “Oh” she had retired to 
the chair where she still sat, watching Mat lift a glass to 
Mrs. Kaufman’s mouth. Feebly Mrs. Kaufman pushed 
it away, and then succumbed, reclining against his arm. 

Mat had the air of one who was amusing some one else 
while only partially amused himself. His high forehead 
above his dark blue eyes seemed higher than ever; surely 
there was less of the short black hair that had once been 
curly. Tonight his face did not seem so unfinished and 
questioning. Its rectangularity, its regularity, were pos¬ 
sessed with half a purpose. Bending closer he mur¬ 
mured in Mrs. Kaufman’s ear, continuously, as if he 
were explaining something very confidential and very 
important over a telephone. Mr. Kaufman, with his 
back to this and facing Arlie, was pouring some whiskey 
from a flask Mat had set on the table much earlier; and 
was trying at the same time to blow away the sinuosity 
of gray smoke that coiled its slow banners through the 
room. 

“I can’t mix my drinks, Mrs. Somers, like your hus¬ 
band. I can’t mix my drinks. Like ’em clear, like— 
like eyes, you know . . . blue eyes.” 

“Your wife’s?” Arlie inquired indififerently. They 
were her first words for minutes. 

“No, not my wife’s, like Ed’s wife’s . . . wife . . . 
Ed wife’s . . . Ed’s wife’s ’s . . . you know.” He 

[ 336 ] 


drank. His face had been meek and pleasant, not dirty 
at all. She wanted to talk to him, and had taken her 
chair by another empty one in the hope he would fol¬ 
low her to it. 

“Have a drink yourself, Mrs. Arlie? I—really, I’d 
like to have you drink. With me.” 

“No thanks.” 

“Help you to forget. Husbands get foolish sometimes 
. . . can’t help it. I know. I’d like to be . . . often 
. . . often. . . .” He touched her withdrawing hand. 
“No? Well, you’re right. Just because Ed’s off, no rea¬ 
son for you, for us, but—” 

“Sit up and be sensible.” The words snapped out 
through a thick mist. She could almost see the words 
struggle through it, a thickening mist about her, not alone 
of smoke. She was light, and couldn’t find herself. 
Sullenly she ceased trying. Ed’s arm withdrew from 
about Seraphine. They were seated against the wall be¬ 
hind the table. Then his arm slipped back and Sera¬ 
phine let her head sag upon Ed’s shoulder. He tenderly 
enclosed the bright upward face with his arm, drew it 
closer, bent over. The tautness of her strained body 
protruded the slope of her breasts under the red waist. 
Arlie watched it with the same stiff lack of interest with 
which she watched Mat and Mrs. Kaufman. It was 
merely a growth of dream out of that mist; it would dis¬ 
solve. She flung out her arms, driving away smoke and 
mist and clearing the air for a moment. 
“Open the window behind you, Kaufman,” she directed. 
“There, it’ll do you good. Listen, I want to talk to you. 
I want you to tell me something. Are you steady now?” 

“As ice.” 

“Something about tonight. You know when your wife 
slapped you? On the stage, I mean, and you blubbered 
at one side. Now tell me why it was I didn’t feel like 
laughing for a minute. No, I didn’t cry too. I knew it 

[337] 


was just to get a hand, but tell me why I’d have just the 
tiniest beginning of a cry in me. ... I’d like to know 
that.” 

He smiled at her, and seemed himself now. Had he 
been playing drunk to cover his attentions, if that be¬ 
came necessary? She examined the possibility dispas¬ 
sionately. 

“Maybe,” he began, “it was because I felt mad, and a 
little like crying. She hurt me, see?” 

“Oh come. I’m not so innocent as all that.” 

“But it’s a fact. Absolutely. You see, I’d crabbed 
a line from her earlier. Got the laugh. She never can 
put some things across, and I can. I wanted things to 
go right in Ed’s house, so I started off and shoved her 
into it, see? and she had to play tag. So she biffed 
me right. I had to take it later, too.” 

“But isn’t that in your act?” 

“Sure it is, but not the big whack. Damn’ near broke 
my nose. It’s been sore ever since.” He touched his 
face tenderly. 

“Yes, but that wouldn’t account for the way I was 
feeling.” 

“Maybe not. ... I’m going to close this here window. 
Chilly.” 

Seraphine’s eyes, dark and gleaming open, stared 
wildly at the ceiling. She was struggling to be free and 
Ed was struggling to retain her. 

The mist of indifference was vanishing; only smoke 
was left. She must bring back the mist. “Pour me a 
drink, Kaufman.” She drank, choked, spread the whis¬ 
key slowly through her mouth, let it trickle down. “Give 
me another.” She sank back. An eery glow began to 
penetrate her. She was lulled, vibrating. She sprang 
up. 

“Start the phonograph, Ivaufy. Ed borrowed it on 
purpose. I know you can dance. Teach me the new 

[338] 


ones. I don’t know ’em. Come on, you muts!” She 
shoved the table back. Ed and Seraphine tottered. She 
pushed harder, but Ed rescued their chairs and stagger¬ 
ing they let themselves be pushed farther. Then Arlie 
threw herself in Kaufman’s arms. Mat was watching 
her with quizzical superiority, almost contempt. She 
flattened her breasts against Kaufman and somehow was 
dancing, back and forth, whirled quickly but agilely fol¬ 
lowing. A beating glow of music blared and dimmed 
and blared again through the room, through her. Kauf¬ 
man had both arms around her, was clutching her tightly 
to him. Oh, she didn’t care! She would make him 
wild. . . . Whirl, back again. She was lifted. . . . 

Mat and Mrs. Kaufman were dancing now. She 
looked through a crackled glaze of color for Ed, making 
him out still behind the table, Seraphine’s head in his 
lap and his hands on her breasts. 

“Watch where you’re going,” Mrs. Kaufman was 
shouting. Had they bumped each other? The light of 
the room dimmed. Kaufman had danced her into the 
darkness of the bedroom, and out. He started for it 
again, but she brought them up against the jamb; her 
head knocked cruelly against it. She fell away from 
him into a chair. “Come on,” he was saying through 
the swirl. She struck out at him. Fool, words hurt, 
like her head, yet she was speaking: “Open the window; 
leave it open.” Shivering in the cold air she took the 
glass from the detached hand remaining steadily in front 
of her and drank. A memory of the first inner glow 
stirred. There came a beery belch. She was dizzy as 
she tried for the door. 

“I’ll help you in.” 

“You won’t. Go back. I—go back.” She struck at 
him again. 

She fell across the bed full length. She wanted to 
burrow into it and be covered as with hills, to have pres- 

[339] 


sure, pressure, to compress her to herself. Her leg had 
swollen to enormous porous size, a continent in itself, 
which she could yet move, across the silence and across it. 

4 

Most of the smoke had vanished, leaving only its stale¬ 
ness behind. The window was closed. Kaufman was 
stretched out on the cot, an empty glass on the floor by 
his languidly dropped hand. Mat and Mrs. Kaufman 
had their backs to her. Seraphine, in Ed’s lap, she 
could barely see. Was Seraphine crying? Ed, after 
staring at her in stony unrecognition, returned the angle 
of his face to Seraphine’s. 

She did not know how long she had been absent. It 
seemed hours; perhaps it was half an hour. At any rate 
she was clear-headed now, and could order even the gray 
confusion of the room with its clots of persons. What 
she focussed on was Mrs. Kaufman’s calf, extending be¬ 
yond her skirt, fat, round, black, and tapering to the 
ankle against which Mat’s toe rested. 

For the length of a moment’s stupidity she gazed at 
that junction, and then returned to the bedroom window 
to look out on the desolate street. There were dark 
gleams where the pools of the thaw had frozen; softly 
she became aware of the telephone poles, rising in thin, 
black immaculateness down the street. They went on and 
on, along country roads, past sleeping farm buildings, to 
other towns and on again. But they kept going, circling 
around, darting off, in interminable lines. Desperately 
she shook them off, detached herself, to find them nar¬ 
rowing upon her and pulling her along, an infinite chit- 
ter-chatter of poles . . . poles. They were gone. But 
confusion lay about her, dust of confusion. A waver 
of music—the music of her morning—sounded flute-like 
to some inner sense; then came the realization that it 

[340] 


had all gone, and that no comfort was possible, at the end 
of her day, in the knowledge she had lived such a morn¬ 
ing, such a long and silver hour. Having had it didn’t 
matter. 

She groped again for the bed and lay there in anguish. 
Out of the upper night developed a hover of menace, 
cold and of no color. 

“Oh, my God, my God! Is that all you are? Is that 
all?” Then she arose, slowly, as if she had found, in 
her groping, what she sought. 

5 

Mat stood in the doorway, then crossed quickly, with 
the noiseless agility of a cat, to the bed. “What you 
drop?” he asked, but heard no answer. 

“What did you drop?” 

There was a movement on the bed, and a groan fol¬ 
lowed. 

“What’s the matter? Tell me.” 

The movement ceased; there came a paroxysmal in- 
drawal of breath, gathering at its close to a tone. As he 
went forward his foot kicked something light that 
bounded, dull glass, against the baseboard, and rocking 
fell silent. He reached for it, waving his hand over the 
floor. “Ed!” he called into the silence of the other room. 
“Where’s the light, the light?” His arms fought the air 
in desperate futility, then brilliance flooded the room, and 
he turned to see Arlie on the bed, doubled up in pain, 
her hands on her stomach, her eyes pleading. He picked 
up the bottle and read. 

“My God, girl! Tell me, quick, where the eggs?” 

“Kitchen . . . cupboard,” she gasped. He had al¬ 
ready gone. Seconds of racket succeeded in the kitchen, 
and he was back, but he had to wait while she vomited. 

“Take this,” he said. 


[341] 


“No,” she whispered, and shook her head. 

“Take it,” he commanded, and an eggy slime flowed 
down her throat. She lay back. “No you don’t. You 
get up. You got to walk.” 

“I can’t,” faintly. 

“You’re going to get up, that’s all.” 

She swung to her feet, grasped his arm. “You come 
with me,” and he led her into the other room, rescued 
the flask and poured her a drink. 

“I can’t take more,” she whispered. 

“You have to. Drink it.” She turned to him a white 
face, small and pleading, but finding his eyes, drank. 

“Now come back.” 

“I can’t walk more—'lie down.” 

“Listen, how many of those did you take?” 

“One, maybe. I don’t know. . . . Spit most of it out.” 

“Oh.” He was panting. “I guess you’re all right 
then. I heard the bottle drop. I musta come right 
away. Soon as I knew I’d heard it I did. You—you 
had me scared, Arlie.” 

She put out her hand, he was trembling. “I feel better 
now. I couldn’t of really got much down.” She smiled 
at him wryly. “I guess I was more scared than any¬ 
thing.” 

“I’m glad I didn’t act as if you was just scared. I’ll 
get a doctor now. Where’s the telephone?” 

“Had it taken out. We don’t use one here much.” 

“I’ll tell Ed to go for him then. But no, wait a min¬ 
ute.” He made a quick trip to the door and back. “I 
guess Ed’s taken that girl home. I remember now when 
I come in here first they was coming to, sort of, and I 
heard a door close. It musta been them.” 

“They.” 

“‘They’? Yeh, sure.” 

She couldn’t explain. She thought she had been cor- 

[342] 


recting herself before Mrs. Shuman. “But listen, Mat. 
Promise me you won’t tell Ed. I was more scared than 
anything. Thought I was having pains, and wasn’t. I 
don’t want Ed to know.” 

But he ought to know, after the way he flung the gay 
arm tonight. Do him good, driving you to this. Mv 
God!” J 

“It wasn’t that. You don’t understand.” 

“No? What then?” 

“It’s too hard to tell you. . . . Turn out the light. 
It hurts my eyes . . . there. ... Do you think Ed will 
be back soon?” 

“I hope so. But what’s the matter, Arlie? What 
made you take that?” 

“I don’t know. I couldn’t stand it. I was afraid, I 
guess.” 

“Of what?” 

“I can’t tell you now. I can’t find it.” 

“Wasn’t it Ed, and Seraphine?” 

“No, not that. That doesn’t hurt me, yet.” 

“What then?” Mat had drawn a chair to the bedside 
and was leaning shadowily near, like a doctor. 

“I don’t know that I can tell you, Mat,” she said, put¬ 
ting out a hand which he touched and then held. “It’s 
like when you turned the light out just then. Then things 
sorta stepped out of nothing and stood outside, big and 
awful—you don’t know what they are, and . . . once in 
a while it’s like that with me. It was tonight. The light 
went out, inside, and it was like God, without any brains, 
coming after me, just me alone. Don’t ask me more, 
Mat. Just hold my hand, tighter.” 

They remained thus, with grasped hands, for a time 
that was huge and minute. They expanded toward each 
other and were merging continents; they were minute and 
separate; they were usual. 

[343] 


6 


Then some one stirred in the other room and Mat left 
her to see what it was. “It’s Kaufman,” he reported. 
“He’s waking up. Laying there on the cot by his wife. 
She’s dead to the world. I’ll get ’em up and out.” He 
vanished. Slow voices began, protests, words from Mat; 
but unable to impose any pattern of meaning on the pulpy 
murmur, she gave up trying. 

A tall, vague form stood beside her. Ed was speak¬ 
ing. “Mat . . . said you’d been sick. Better get 
dressed, undressed, Arl. In bed. I’ll clean up. Needs 
it.” 

“Take off my shoes.” She lifted the comforter that 
had been thrown over her and Ed began to fumble at her 
shoes, then snapped on the bulb. She met its pain of 
light with a cry. 

After a time she was going to sleep again, with Ed 
beside her, breathing heavily and regularly. 

7 

Mrs. Gelke brought Gerald in during the next morn¬ 
ing. Trouble was on his face. “Kiss me, Gerald,” Arlie 
said to him. He hesitated before giving her a long wet 
kiss and stood looking at her soberly. 

He was getting big, he was no longer a baby. She 
hadn’t realized: he would be four in May. 

“I’ll get you something to eat, Mrs. Somers. What 
would you like? Your husband ain’t in no condition to 
do much.” 

“Oh, you needn’t trouble. I’ll be all right.” 

“I will too trouble. You can’t talk that way to me.” 
Mrs. Gelke drew Gerald back to her and put an arm 
around him, looking at Arlie critically. Her face was 
long and dark, horsey, with intense brown eyes. 

[344] 


Arlie gave in. “Well, a little toast, maybe.” 

“I’ll get it, right away. Come on, Gerald, you stay 
with Gelke today.” Gerald followed obediently, even 
eagerly, without another glance at his mother. She was 
losing him, she felt, just like that. Better to send him 
back to the Shumans than to go on this way. She hardly 
saw him, and “Gelke” was the center of his world, about 
whom and in whose rooms he revolved. Gelke, too, like 
Mrs. Shuman, had spoken once of adopting him. Had 
she no right to her own flesh, that even now looked away 
from her to others for his pleasures and his care? 

The valiance of yesterday’s morning had faded so rap¬ 
idly that she might never find it again. Its beauty had 
been that of release from the clutter of living, the clutter 
of being a woman, but the brutal hours had let it round 
toward release from life itself; and there the half¬ 
heartedness of her attempt had brought confusion. At 
each pole she had failed. 

All day Ed came in and went out, but not until evening 
did he sit down beside her, his fingers working at the 
fringe of the clean bedspread. Each moment she 
thought he was about to speak and discharge in confes¬ 
sion the trouble gathered on his face, but he said nothing. 
Perhaps he did not know how much she had drunk, and 
hence how little she had seen; or perhaps he could not 
force from his throat the insuperable words. Yet it was 
plain that his conscience was at work. She would have 
pitied him for it if she had been able to pity anything, 
but to pity would be to rise above the lethargic indiffer¬ 
ence which had possessed her, and which made him an 
object only a shade more interesting than the other ob¬ 
jects in the room. 


[345] 


CHAPTER XXIV 


WITHOUT STINT OR LIMIT 

I 

After her days in bed she was very familiar with the 
ceiling; and ordinary life, resumed, was only an exten¬ 
sion of that flat, discolored expanse. But with the decla¬ 
ration of war in April she found remote disturbances en¬ 
larging to include even her within themselves. Alien and 
tremendous affairs, issues of peril and coruscant light, 
were about to be near. At times she rose to a new life; 
and then was old. 

She sat one morning watching Ed polish her shoes. 
“You needn’t do that,” she said, her eyes on the angular 
jerk of his arm. “I can do ’em myself or drop in at 
Gus’s. It don’t cost much.” 

“Well, it costs some, and we need money for the Lib¬ 
erty Loans.” 

“Yes?” A dull yes, with only a weak rise of interro¬ 
gation. All life had moved behind bleared glass and in 
dull water. To speak, especially to Ed, was a feeble 
tossing of bits of paper against the impenetrability of the 
walling glass. All movement was weighted, as if the 
medium in which she lived had invisibly thickened. She 
seemed never to think. Instead, dull strains, twisting 
into knots, coiling painfully, never accomplishing. Yet 
she was about to find something muggily achieved: this 
was not the first time Ed had polished her shoes. Twice 

[346] 


she had found the dishes washed; often he had helped her 
with them; and he had relieved her also of some of her 
work at the Isis, sending her out into the street and to 
the confused loneliness of the rooms. 

Ed performed these services as once she had per¬ 
formed them for him; he had been doing them since the 
morning after the party; weeks ago. She saw it only 
now. Was it because of Seraphine, who had been 
“fired’’? That had been unjust; Seraphine had been 
as good at the new organ as at the piano. But ex¬ 
actly what he was expiating she did not care. Ser- 
aphines might come and go, and Ed take all of them 
home. 

She looked about at the disorder of the room. “Ger¬ 
ald, you go out and look for the paper. Maybe it fell off 
the steps.” 

“Nope,” Ed ofifered, “it didn’t come. I looked all over 
for it. I knew you’d want it.” 

“Why didn’t you buy one then?” she asked irritably. 
“That’s about the third time this month we’ve missed that 
paper.” 

“Oh no it ain’t, Arlie. It’s been late sometimes, but we 
ain’t really been missed.” 

“We have too! Don’t tell me, I’m the one that reads 
it. When do you look at it ? Any one would think we 
weren’t at war, to judge by you.” 

“You know, Arlie, I do everything I can.” 

“Except go.” 

“But when I wanted to go you wouldn’t let me. How 
can I, and leave you and Gerald?” 

“Gerald would be all right. Better’n the rest of us, at 
the Shumans. And I guess I could look out for myself.” 

“All right, then, by God! I’ll go!” He tossed the 

brush aside. 

Arlie sat sullen by the window. “You won’t!” she 
snarled. 

[ 347 ] 


“Well, for the love of God, what ails you? First you 
tell me to go and then to stay. Maybe you think I 
wouldn’t like to go, with you this way all the time. I 
never know where to find you any more. Honest to God 
I don’t. Why, I try, kid, honest, I do—try to make 
things just as pleasant as I can. It seems too damn’ hard 
at times. W'hat’s the—” His voice trailed out. He 
didn’t want to ask again what was the matter, Arlie 
thought, because of a fear that she would present him 
with what he was trying to cover, under the lapse of time, 
with these small persistent tasks—the matter of Sera- 
phine, which she had never mentioned. But how far he 
was from understanding when even she could not under¬ 
stand. 

All she knew at present was her deep need of the 
morning Gazette. She would feel better when she had 
used it. If only she could let Ed know how little Sera- 
phine mattered, let him know without referring to her. 
She sank into hopeless immersion, floating lax in utter in¬ 
difference, then felt indignation beginning to bristle. She 
would strike out again if he did not speak. 

He did; and seemed to have followed a dark parallel 
of her own thoughts: “I’ll go and get a paper for you 
now, while you get breakfast. Come on, Gerald; want to 
go with Ed?” 

“Don’t take that child with you. You’ll forget he’s 
along and let him be run over.” Her face crimsoned at 
the excuse she had found for her indignation. 

“Rats!” He smiled at her. “Come on, boy.” Gerald 
went, and Arlie felt better. She always did when mo¬ 
mentarily Ed took command. His weakness fed itself. 

Breakfast she had ready when they returned, and as 
the others ate, Arlie read until her coffee was lukewarm 
and her egg clammy. She gulped them down. The pa¬ 
per itself had been a vivid emotional meal, without which 
she felt starved and daringly irritable. 

[348] 



That loyalty which in other years had made her uncon¬ 
sciously pro-German, coming blindly to life, had identified 
itself with the power quickening through the country. 

2 

Little by little as the months passed she wrought for 
herself from the war a region of escape. Unknown to 
Ed she gave the newsboy passes to the Isis for bringing 
the paper up the steps and slipping it under the door; 
he never missed them now. 

Her mother wrote that Phil had gone in the first draft, 
and Arlie hung up a service flag and wore a pin with a 
blue star. Time did not permit work in the Red Cross 
rooms, but she knitted constantly, neglecting housework 
and keeping people waiting until she could knit to the 
middle of the needle. Always she left the tickets to hear 
the four-minute speeches, and Ed complained to her 
of the fifteen minutes one orotund gentleman absorbed, 
she flew at him in a small frenzy, calling him “pro-Ger¬ 
man, Hun, dirty yellow dog.” To affirm his loyalty he 
announced that he was going, even if he was beyond draft 
age, if the board would let him; whereupon she sulked 
until the tears came and pleaded with him into the night. 
He did not go. 

When she heard that the young lawyer had gone she 
found herself thinking of a pin with two blue stars. She 
snatched back the thought, though not soon enough. 
First she smiled at herself and then, breaking one teacup, 
threw another after it in her rage. 

A diffused sense of personal sacrifice sometimes helped 
her with her work. Before the war had made her part of 
its hysterical boiling rise she had clearly seen that her 
work at the Isis did little more than purchase for Ed an 
indulgence in such playthings as the “Isis Screen,” the 
lack of which did not prevent the other moving picture 

[ 349 ] 


theatres in Grand Forks from being more prosperous than 
the Isis. But now it was not only hard to get help, it was 
a struggle to meet the payments on the Liberty Loans; 
the quota assigned them by the Loyalty League having 
been biased apparently on Ed’s advertising space rather 
than on his resources. At first Ed had wanted to protest, 
but Arlie had violently objected. “We’ll do what they tell 
us. Think this war’s going to be won by protests? Be¬ 
sides, it’ll be bad for the Isis.” The result was that for 
the first time it was necessary for her to work, just when 
she was wanting, more than ever before, a bungalow 
again, with a roomy yard for Gerald. She wondered 
whether many women who appeared to be serving so as¬ 
siduously were really sacrificing as much as she told her¬ 
self she was. 

At intervals of a month or more Mat would drop in, 
looking up Ed first and then coming to her. 

When he came peace gathered around her; somewhere 
music was playing, though she could hear it but faintly. 
Then only did she drop her knitting. When he had gone 
she was soothed, and turned over in her mind the “inside” 
information on the conduct of the war. Apparently he 
heard much of it. 

Once he came to the rooms when she was alone. 

After their first words there was a silence for a time. 
“You haven’t tried any more foolishness, have you?” he 
asked finally. 

“No,” she smiled, “that’s all gone, Mat. I’m myself 
now, all the time. And I’m happy as—well—as I sup¬ 
pose you ever get.” 

“I don’t believe you,” he announced curtly. 

She looked up at him, at his wrinkling forehead, his 
prosperous form, and at the blue of his eyes, in which 
lurked knowledge of an uncomprehended defeat. “But I 
am,” she protested; she recalled her knitting, Gerald— 

[350] 


whom she knew better now—and the morning Gazette, 
the evening Tribune. “I am, Mat, happy as you’re likely 
to ever get.” 

His head dropped and he regarded the floor stupidly. 
In a short time he left, and Arlie felt it had hurt him to 
say the few words of good-bye. What thoughts, what 
wants, what sick vacancies and spurts of anger congre¬ 
gated behind that troubled forehead, she wondered. Of 
what would he be thinking as he swung his sales? Some 
one should be caring for him, soothing him. 

3 

The restaurant was crowded the night she met Gloria 
and her husband. They had come up the aisle of tables 
rather conspicuously, just as she and Ed were finishing 
their dinner. Arlie had recognized Whittaker first, de¬ 
spite his officer’s uniform. His head, so large that it 
was almost a distortion, seemed handsomer under his offi¬ 
cer’s cap. Gloria was at his side, shedding a rich im¬ 
maculateness and a consciousness of being attended by an 
officer whom people were noticing. Arlie rose instinc¬ 
tively: “Why Gloria! I’m so glad to see you. And 
Mr. Whittaker.” They shook hands. “This—this is 
Mr. Somers.” Arlie fumbled the words. Ed shambled 
up and leaning across the table extended his hand. 
“Pleased to meet you, I’m sure.” 

“Mr. Somers owns the Isis, where I work.” 

“Oh yes,” Gloria’s brows lifted. “How do you ao, 
Mr. Somers.” 

Silence began to grow, people were watching them, she 
must say something else. “I—I didn’t know you were in 
town, Gloria.” 

Gloria began to rattle. “Oh, just for a little. Stopped 
off between trains to look up some friends. Going on 

[35i] 


to Des Moines in a few hours. But we missed our 
friends and had to have a bite. Mr. Whittaker is going 
to ’phone them again. They’ll be pretty sure to be in 
now. The Hilliers. Perhaps you know who they 
are?” 

“I met Mrs. Hillier once, I think. She’s a clubwoman, 
isn’t she?” 

“I suppose so. Yes. We’ve got to go now. I’m so 
sorry we haven’t more time. I’d love to talk with you, 
Arlie . . . about everything. And do write mother 
about Gerald. Send her some snapshots, too. You’ve 
no idea .how she wants to see him.” Murmurs of good¬ 
bye, and they walked on. 

“I suppose I shoulda told her I was pleased to meet 
her again, or something,” Ed mumbled. “Such nuts 
make me sick, though.” 

“Yes. . . .” She was watching Whittaker at the tele¬ 
phone, and Gloria, who was talking to Clara, the cashier. 
Clara turned to look at them and answered something 
that made Gloria lift her brows again and smile, coldly. 
Then she and Whittaker went into the lighted street. 

When she stood by the cash register Arlie remembered 
this. She had been reasoning herself out of an irrational 
moment of disloyalty, caused by Whittaker’s uniform and 
Ed’s slouchy civilian clothes. It made the war too much 
the affair of other people. Whittaker and Gloria had ab¬ 
sorbed, had been, America; she had to strain her loyalty 
through them, and the war was not so closely nor signifi¬ 
cantly hers. Even Phil—he was being ordered around 
by Whittaker, probably. She didn’t need to wear herself 
out knitting. . . . Then Gloria’s smile struck through at 
her. 

“Listen, Clara, tell me: did that woman say anything to 
you about me? The one that just went out with the 
officer ?” 

“Asked me who you was.” 

[352] 


“Who I was! Why, she’s my—she was my sister-in- 
law !” 

“Aw, come off.” 

“Honest. But what did you tell her?” 

“Tell her ? Why, I told her who you were: Mrs. Som¬ 
ers and Mr. Somers. Said you owned the Isis.” 

“Oh, did you?”—weakly. 

“Yep, it ain’t no lie, is it?” Clara smiled amiably and 
took another check and bill. 

Arlie caught Ed’s arm. He had not heard and she did 
not tell him. He wouldn’t be able to understand what 
she felt. It would be harder now, with the money gone, 
but it would be her own life she was living—good as an 
old shoe. She fought back the denials pressing upon her. 
It was the life she wanted. She had chosen it herself. 
She wanted to feel that she wanted to dance—with happi¬ 
ness, but couldn’t. Tomorrow she would, though. 

4 

But when tomorrow came she saw first the need of 
preparing Ed for what was coming. She tried hints but 
he was too preoccupied to notice them; she became dole¬ 
fully pessimistic and was “sure that they’d lose it, now, 
just when they needed it most.” 

“Bosh!” he answered. “You were too slick for ’em. 
I’m no more than ‘Mr. Somers,’ the gink that owns the 
Isis, where you work. What do they know, or care, 
either?” 

At last she told him what she had learned from Clara, 
and was surprised to find him so little perturbed. “All 
right, we’ll cut out some of these extras you been com¬ 
plaining about. A lot of my ads don’t pay. Seen it for 
a long time. Far as the Loans go, we can meet ’em some¬ 
how. Don’t worry.” 

Two days later the letter came: 

[353] 


“Dear Arlie: 

“I should far rather not write as I have to do in this 
letter. It is not an easy or a pleasant thing to tell another 
that she has at last been discovered in the practice of what 
I can only, and with charity, call prevarication. Why you 
should not have told us that you had married again I can¬ 
not conceive, except for the added ease you thought the 
money would give you, without your stopping to think of 
the dis-ease, yes, the disease, the money surely must have 
given your conscience. 

“It is not the fact that it has been, occasionally, a little 
hard for us in these times when every dollar must be de¬ 
voted to a sacred cause, to find the money for you. We 
gladly did that in remembrance of one who loved you enough 
to marry you despite the fact that you had already cheap¬ 
ened yourself. Once, I blamed you both for that, and yet 
was able to love you both and think of you as my children 
still—both of you, and try as best I could to do for you 
what had not been done. Then, when Herbert died, I 
wanted to provide for you still, to keep you as I knew my 
son would have wished, if only he could have lived. That, 
you prevented yourself, first, by leaving us to live in Des 
Moines—in what manner I do not know—and then by still 
further cheapening yourself by taking a position, a job, 
certainly below that which Herbert, not to say we—would 
have wished. Not content with that you marry the pro¬ 
prietor of the theatre in which you work and say no word 
to us. I do not know, Mrs. Somers, how long you have 
been married, nor do I care to know. I am only glad that 
no more permanent settlement was made for you than that 
which was made. But most of all I am glad to have back 
the boy I loved, for I feel that you who kept him so long 
have had to yield him up to me again, every day and 
every memory of him. Yes, I have him back. He 
was not to blame. You have made me sure of that. 
The fault was yours and yours alone, and but for you Her¬ 
bert might still be alive, the pure strong boy I reared and 
loved. And he might even now be in France with his 
former comrades and playmates instead of lying in the 
cemetery at Lawson. That will mean nothing to you, I 

[354] 


suspect, but how much it would mean to me! To have 
Herbert fallen in action for his country rather than to 
have had his life frustrated by you. 

‘‘Yet even as I write, Arlie—and I come back to my letter 
after a long interruption—I cannot help feeling for you. 
Perhaps it is only that I want Gerald’s mother to be finer 
than other women, and it cuts me to the heart to think that 
you are as I have written. Won’t you come to see me, 
even now, and bring Gerald with you? Surely you would 
be happier without him and free to live with your hus¬ 
band as you would wish. At any time we stand ready legally 
to adopt him, if only you can see the plain advantages of 
such a plan. The time will come, and shortly, when you 
will feel a duty to let him come to us occasionally. Why 
not now, when it will be easier for him to come, before his 
affections are set? 

“Of course there will be no more monthly checks, though 
we shall arrange credit up to a certain amount at one of 
the Grand Forks stores for his clothes, etc., to keep up that 
part of the plan. Soon, perhaps, we can make some more 
definite arrangement. But know always that Gerald must 
not suffer, and that he is always welcome—oh, so much 
more than welcome at his grandmother’s home and in her 
heart. 

“As for you, somehow I can feel, now as I close this let¬ 
ter, only sorrow for you, Arlie, by whom my own dear son 
did the right, the manly, and the honorable thing. 

“Sincerely yours, 

“Laura J. Shuman.” 

Arlie refolded the letter and stared ahead with con¬ 
fused eyes. She was not what Mrs. Shuman implied, 
nor was Herb—but Herb was a wraith, a faded memory. 
He had never lived. She would pay back the money, bit 
by bit: it could be figured out, later. Then her head col¬ 
lapsed upon her arms and sobs shook her body, as 
through contradictions unnoted or unsolved, and through 
a fog of projected answers, denials, justifications, the 
hueless consciousness welled in her that a part of her life 

[355] 


was done that had meant more than she had suspected, 
that the pressure of time and life had closed a door on an 
uncomfortable brightness of possibility that vaguely, in 
memory and dream, had shown her a light by which she 
had been able, unknown to herself, to hope. That bright¬ 
ness had been closed away. Back, back, through the fog 
of hours and things done she sobbed and fought, desper¬ 
ately sinking, farther and farther, until the sobs quieted 
and she endured through a pain of silence. 

5 

It was not until the spring of 1918 that she saw Mat 
again. He came to the box office first, without pretend¬ 
ing to look at the pictures. “Well, he said, “I’m going. 
Wanted to say good-bye first.” 

“You’re going? Where?” 

“War.” 

“But you can’t enlist now; you’re too old for the 
draft.” 

“That won’t keep me from going. You’ll see. This 
damn’ Hun offensive is getting my goat. I’ll get there 
too late, I suppose, but I feel as if I ought to stick myself 
into it somewhere. Haven’t any one but a sister I hate, 
and she’ll enjoy hanging out a little service flag.” 

She caught his hand under the counter. “Mat, don’t 
go. I tell you not to. I can’t stand it to have you. 
Please don’t.” 

“Why not? I thought you was a little patriot, Arlie, 
fiercer than most of ’em.” He looked at her glistening 
eyes. 

“I know, I am. But I don’t want you to go.” 

“You don’t? . . . Arlie, say, you don’t care a little for 
me, do you? It isn’t that?” 

She shook her head. “No, not that way I don’t. I 
don’t know why it is.” 


[356] 


“Because it would make it easier to go if I knew you 
did.” 

She felt herself beginning to act: it was like a war 
story, only she was married and she didn’t love Mat any¬ 
way. She must break through that swift, enclosing ring 
they had magically woven around themselves. Within it 
she was not herself, nor was Mat. 

“I’ll go with the K. C. if I can’t go any other way,” he 
said, breaking the silence and the ring. 

“I didn’t know you were a Catholic.” 

“It sorta stays with you.” 

When he had gone, with his quiet, bouncing step, his 
straw hat set firmly on his head, she tried to understand, 
but could not. Her fingers were being pried loose from 
something she had been clutching and valuing. She was 
slipping down into intolerable loneliness. If only she had 
whatever it was she had seen on beyond the Shumans, or 
if she had been able to keep Mat—just as he was and 
where he was. 


6 

The eleventh of November caught her by surprise. 
She had known the war must be drawing to a close, but 
the end and victory were to her only another smash of 
excitement, a burst of final and violent light . . . yet it 
was not to be final; her whole emotional system, or¬ 
ganized and rooted in its darkness, could not believe that 
that fundamental chaos could end. 

Ed had rushed into the rooms with the news. Hastily 
she had put Gerald’s coat on him, and the three of them 
mingled with the crowds in the thickening streets, wan¬ 
dering from block to block, watching the people on the 
automobiles, on the trucks. Lunch they ate hurriedly and 
returned to the streets. Bunchie Mudge stopped a truck 
beside them, they clambered on, and through the after¬ 
noon blew horns into the clamor, a tin washtub banging 

[ 357 ] 


on the pavement behind. When they left the truck Ger¬ 
ald began to complain and plead for home and Gelke. 

“I guess the boys are going to raise some hell with the 
Chink restaurant up the street. It’s the only one that 
didn’t close,” Ed reported after conference with a near 
group. “Want to go along and watch ?” 

“No, I’ll take Gerald home. Are we going to run to¬ 
night ?” 

“Don’t know. See what Bunchie and the rest are going 
to do. Tell you later. The noise is sorta petering out, 
though. Guess maybe they'll want some place to go to¬ 
night.” 

When he had gone Arlie waited for a chance to cross 
the street. The noise was dwindling, but it was like the 
lull in the applause that comes just before redoubled vol¬ 
ume. She was namelessly distressed; it was the end of 
the war. Nothing but the shouting now. It was all 
over. Of course everybody was glad. She was too. 
Hadn’t she shouted with the best of them? 

But as again she listened, all the confusion around her 
seemed a last rickety explosion, a grim clatter of celebra¬ 
tion of some defeat she had herself suffered but which 
she could not comprehend. She picked up Gerald, and 
darted, poised, jumped on among the automobiles—safe, 
but as if pursued by the whole yapping street. With Ger¬ 
ald’s hand in hers she fled along the dusky sidewalk, and 
touched with her hand the buildings that were becoming 
brown with the November evening. 

7 

She no longer read the papers. There was no nutri¬ 
ment in the details of peace. Her mother wrote that Phil, 
who had been in action, had come through safely. From 
that she forced a small gladness, only to discover that 
she had not been worried about him. 

[358] 


The next time her mother wrote it was to ask for 
money. Oliver was sick again, too sick to work; he 
might never be able to work. The mortgage they had 
finally paid off during the war, but they had no ready 
cash. The lodge was helping some but they needed 
more; ‘ and I know you got it, so help out your ma and 
your poor father now if your ever going to.” Arlie sent 
twenty dollars and knew that she could send little more. 

The giving of the money was tribute to the past; and 
it carried part of herself with it to roam fretfully once 
more in that unquiet region. Were things in it, too, still 
to edge closer? She was helpless before it. She might 
have kept it off, in darkness, with more to throw. In¬ 
stead it was snouting forward again into a misty and bale¬ 
ful twilight of awareness. 

Then a letter came, one day, from Mat. She read the 
first part cheerfully, puzzled only that he should be writ¬ 
ing her at all—he had never sent more than a post card 
before, and that to Ed. As she read the close she 
stiffened: 

“I am not coming to Grand Forks for some time, but when 
I do come, Arlie, it is not going to be like it was. You can 
depend on that. It will be different. And I am not going 
away like I used to go.” 

But she didn’t love Mat; she didn’t even care for him 
now, he was so—so absurd, with his big forehead, ques¬ 
tioning eyes and inconsequential chatter. Why should he 
act in this way when he had no other right than that 
given by an accidental charity? Why should he think 
her life was for him simply because he had, possibly, 
saved it—and, probably, had not? 

But he was coming. . . . She would have to manip¬ 
ulate him apart from Ed and Gerald; she would have to 
make him stop dreaming. But how could she, when she 

[359] 


couldn’t herself find what was real in this thinning life? 
She had tried, uselessly, sex, and it was not enough. 
She had been lifted up to a clearing light beyond, only 
to sink until she had tried to find a release in death. 
Profitless—through her own half-heart it had been profit¬ 
less. She would not try that again. 

And running against the walls of light and dark, 
driven before the glare of circumstance, hating the bounds 
but thinking to find only there change and satisfac¬ 
tion, she was caught suddenly back into the swift night: 
the rabbit in front of the automobile, chased and plung¬ 
ing, picked out of darkness by a force it fled but did 
not understand. 

That rabbit she could not help seeing, could in no way 
shake out of her thought, and at times she herself fled, 
with ever at her back a hurtling bulk coming on with 
incredible speed, yet so eerily remote that it might never 
reach her. 


[360] 


CHAPTER XXV 


THE WIFE 

I 

In the first part of the following year the Isis was moder¬ 
ately prosperous, and Ed talked of buying an automobile. 
They would take a vacation, too. They hadn’t had one 
since the Isis had been remodelled, and there had been 
more work to that than play. This time they would take a 
real vacation—buy a tent, some folding cots, a camp stove 
and follow the highways to the Minnesota lakes. But 
one sweltering Saturday midnight in June, when they 
sat at the dining-room table drinking lemonade and talk¬ 
ing across copies of the Motion Picture Universe and the 
Saturday Evening Post, Arlie had urged him to add up 
their probable assets and their certain liabilities—of inter¬ 
est, film rent, etc. As a result Ed decided on a second¬ 
hand Ford. 

Arlie rebelled. If they couldn’t have anything but a 
Ford they’d get along without. But in elaborating her 
objections it was not until she mentioned the likelihood 
of a tip-over that Ed considered her objections seriously. 
“Oh! I’d forgotten. Say, my head’s solid ivory. Of 
course we won’t get a Ford.” 

But it had not been the memory of sorrow or accident 
which locked her in opposition; rather it was the memory 
of wider and golden days in the Shuman car and in the 
Ford which Herb had driven into the yard so proudly 

[36i] 


that first summer at Bright Valley. With the passing of 
the present summer in Grand Forks, and hot weary days 
selling tickets under the fan that had been long out of 
order, her disappointment became sullen whenever she 
saw a tourist car turning down the street. 

She reminded Ed of the plan in the fall, when they met 
the semi-annual interest on their notes only by conven¬ 
iently forgetting to pay Mrs. Gelke the rent for two 
months. “What kinda figuring did you do when you 
were going to buy that Ford last summer?” she asked. 
“The kind I guess I do too often,” he admitted dolefully; 
and she restrained the impulse, summoned by habit, to 
ask a small forgiveness for unpleasantly reminding 
him. 

Ed spoke of it off and on during the winter, but after 
Bunchie Mudge remodelled in the spring, and on the 
strength of new projectors, “the comfortablest seats in 
Iowa,” and a “Heliobrite” screen, most lavishly advertised 
feature after feature, he mentioned it but once. Then, 
when the days grew long and warm, opening in invitation 
to the highways, he spoke of borrowing money for a 
car from Mat, but Arlie pointed out that since they hadn’t 
seen him for two years, and hadn’t heard from him, except 
for a card of greeting at Christmas, they’d better not 
take for granted too much benevolence on his part. More 
silent than usual Ed agreed. 

The next day Arlie took down the fan from its bracket 
and stored it in one of the now unused dressing-rooms at 
the rear of the Isis. If she was to be hot, she decided, 
she would not be irritated by the consciousness of a 
broken fan overhead. 


Toward the first of July that year she received another 
letter from her mother. Her father was dying and 

[362] 


wanted to see her. She’d better come within a week if 
she wanted to see him alive. 

She arrived in Coon Falls early in the afternoon of the 
Fourth, when the celebration was reviving after the noon 
lull. It depressed her to edge through the crowds lin¬ 
ing Main Street, along the entire length of which auto¬ 
mobiles were solidly parked. “Don’t they have any 
horses and buggies any more?” she asked Phil, who car¬ 
ried her suitcase. “You don’t expect ’em in Grand 
Forks, but I did here, sort of.” 

“Don’t see any, do you?” he asked. “Not such a bad 
little burg, this, really. Damn’ lot of money made around 
here in the last year or so, too. Land. That’s one rea¬ 
son we’re celebrating again this year, I guess. Ain’t had 
one for I don’t know when.” 

She looked at her brother, taller now than she, with 
an indefinite hardness in his face, and yet with a little of 
the gentleness of her father in the eyes that appraised her 
as she him. “You’ve changed a lot, Phil, haven’t you?” 
she said. 

“Oh, I don’t know. Seem about the same to myself 
as I always did. I’d say you’re the one that’s changed.” 

“I? How?” 

“Oh, you got a look on your face, in your eyes. I 
don’t get it.” 

She laughed. “Where you working now?” 

“Horack’s Grocery. Took Jarvis’s place. He was 
killed, you know, in France.” 

“Ray! Ray Jarvis !” 

“Yep. But I’m going to get out of there when I get 

married and go to farming.” 

“You! Married ... and farming! Who you go¬ 
ing to marry, Phil ?” 

“Debbie Kittifer. Remember her?” 

Debbie Kittifer. The name sounded familiar. “Oh, 
yes, she worked at the Bijou once. Little tot.” 

[ 363 ] 


“Well, she ain’t a little tot no more. Tall as you are, 
almost.” He snapped open his watch and Arlie saw a 
carefully enclosed snapshot of a laughing girl, her hair 
blown to sunny wisps. She might have been a slender 
sister of Belle Ritchie. 

As they neared the house she noted that it was blistered 
and badly in need of paint, and not at all of the bright 
yellow of other days. Phil opened the door with its fa¬ 
miliar colored glass and she found her mother coming 
down the hallway. “Why, ma! It’s—gee, it’s good to 
see you and be home again once!” 

“You been a long time coming, Arlie, if I do say it.” 
They kissed, and Mrs. Gelston drew back to survey Arlie 
critically. “Well, you ain’t dressed so floosey as I 
thought you’d be. Sorta thought you togged yourself 
out these days, with all your money.” 

“Money, ma! Why, I haven’t any money, only what 
we got in the Isis.” 

“Didn’t that Shuman leave you none? I thought—” 

“We’ll talk later. I want to see pa now. That’s what 
I come for.” As she went upstairs, with Mrs. Gelston 
puffing after, Arlie reflected that her mother was beyond 
plumpness now, she was undeniably fat, with the flab¬ 
biest of double chins. How could her father have mar¬ 
ried her, or have cared for her, at any time? Surely he 
couldn’t now. What, then, kept them together? 

She found her father looking up from the bed with an 
eagerness in his eyes like blue fire. His shaggy hair was 
completely gray, and his face slim and colorless. Taking 
his hand as she sat down on the edge of the bed, she 
looked still into those blue eyes, whose burn seemed to 
find in her something long desired and cooling. She 
pressed his hand tighter. 

“Why don’t you say something, you two?” Mrs. Gel¬ 
ston demanded. 

[364] 


Without turning Arlie spoke. “Ma, you go down and 
get my suitcase, will you? I forgot it.” 

“Go yourself. Think I’m going to wait on you now? 
. . . But I’ll get out, if that’s what you mean.” She 
went. 

“I’m glad I come, pa. I didn’t—didn’t know you were 
so sick.” 

“I’m not so sick, Arlie. I was talking to the doctor 
this morning. He thinks I got months left yet, any¬ 
way.” He paused. “But for a while I made him let 
’em think so. Thought maybe it’d get you here. I been 
wanting to see you, Arl.” 

“I know. I’ve wanted to see you, too.” 

Imponderables pressed into the fragile and precious 
silence that enclosed them. Finally, to prevent that si¬ 
lence from fading into mere absence of words, Arlie 
spoke, moved about the room, peered out the window, 
and chatted of Gerald, of the Isis, of changes in Coon 
Falls. “Phil’s changed a lot, too, don’t you think, pa?” 

“Yep. Guess he has all right. He’s settled down, too, 
better’n most of the boys who’re coming back. Going to 
marry a nice girl, too. She’s got an eighty out south.” 

“My, I’m glad. I was always a little afraid Phil 
wouldn’t turn out well. I guess, though, most sisters 
think that.” 

Oliver smiled and ran a hand through his gray hair. 

“I guess I’m going to have gray hair early like you, 
pa. I keep snipping them out all the time. It sorta runs 
in families, don’t it?” 

“My dad was gray,” he answered, “ever since I can 
remember.” 

“Yes ?” 

“But Arlie, you ain’t told me about your new husband. 
What’s he like?” 

She tried to tell him, and as they talked the afternoon 

[ 365 ] 


deepened. For long intervals they would be silent. At 
last her father dozed and she sat listening to the far-off 
noises of the day—not so loud, she thought, as in former 
years. She tucked the spread around his foot that had 
emerged, a veined and swollen foot, and went down to 
talk with her mother. When she returned he was awake 
and his foot was out again. 

“Here, pa, you’d better get that foot covered up.” 

“Let it alone,” he said irritably. “I want it out. It’s 
too hot.” 

Evening came, with a fullness of sunset over the town, 
and Arlie knew she would leave shortly. Yet she did not 
tell her father. “I’ll go down and get something to eat, 
pa, and bring you your supper.” After he had eaten the 
permitted meal, which her mother had been wholly willing 
she prepare, she told him she must go. “Only wish I 
could buy my ticket from you, pa. Next time, I will. 
I’m sure, too, you’re going to get better.” 

“I’m glad you didn’t tell me earlier you had to go to¬ 
night. Do you, really?” She nodded. “Because then I 
wouldn’t have enjoyed you so much, if I’d had to think 
you were going all the time. And I went and slept some 
too.” 

“I thought it would be better that way, pa.” 

What was this strange growth between them in the 
twilight? a silvery companionship that could come to no 
disaster but an end—with his death, and that would not 
be disaster but healing, in which all, becoming quiet, 
would be perfect. 

“Gooa-bye, pa. I got to jto now or I’ll miss my train.” 
She touched his dry lips with her own, looked at him 
again, and went—alone *his time, for Phil had taken Deb¬ 
bie to a dance. 

She might have staid longer; nothing imperative was 
drawing her back to Grand Forks. Yet she was going, 
even as she wondered why, since her coming had meant 

[366] 


so much to him, she had not remained. But no—to stay 
would be only to disturb and cheapen with familiarities 
what lay between them. It was right that she follow 
the plan made before she left Grand Forks. 

In the noise of Main Street opening about her she felt 
relief. There was even relief in not having to be longer 
in the old house. A tall country lad, who looked like 
Ned Rickenberg, threw at her a handful of confetti that 
flew into her eyes, her nostrils, her mouth. She spat it 
out, tried to laugh, and went on. 

3 

Home again, she put down her suitcase, kissed Gerald, 
and turned to Ed. He was blowing his nose. “Well, 
Ed, I’d think you could do better by me than get a cold 
while I’m gone! In July, too. I just come from one 
sick man.” 

“How is your father?” he evaded, stuffing his handker¬ 
chief into his hip pocket. 

“He’s pretty sick, though he ain’t so sick as I thought 
he was. Don’t you have any clean handkerchiefs?” 

He looked at her stupidly. “I guess so. Why?” 

“Because, that one you got is perfectly filthy. Put it 
out in the basket and let me get you another.” She 
brought him a fresh one. “How’d you get your cold, 
anyway ?” 

“Wandering around with Mat the night you left.” 

“Oh, is he back ?” 

“Yeh, come here for the Fourth, and he made me go 
for a walk. Late, it was, and he hiked me all over town 
and out along the river, and I’d started without a coat and 
it got chilly. I tried to get him to come up and spend 
the night with me. He wouldn’t cjme near the place.” 

“No? How is he now?” 

“He’s a queer nut. I don’t like him as well’s I used 

[ 367 ] 



to. I guess the war sorta went to his head. Acts strange 
as the devil. Walks along for a mile without saying a 
word, and then starts in and talks a blue streak. Never 
got nothing out of life, he says. Didn’t get to go to 
France. Always just missing things. You’d think his 
not getting to France was sending him crazy.” . 

“But why wouldn’t he come up here?” 

“I don’t know. Said you might come in and not like 
it, and when I told him you couldn’t possibly get back 
before this morning he just started off on a tangent and 
talked his head off. About France again.” 

“Is he in town yet?” 

“Uh-uh. Left yesterday afternoon.” 

Arlie walked about examining the rooms. Some un¬ 
washed dishes were piled near the gas plate by the one 
window of the kitchenette. The floor was littered with 
Gerald’s playthings. The bed was tumbled and unmade. 

“Did Gerald stay with Gelke?” 

“Mostly. . . . Say, d’you suppose a man could work 
up a whole vaudeville sketch out of a cold ? Man and a 
woman, you know. Both have colds, and try to make 
love. Ever see anything like that?” 

“Not unless you have. All I seen I seen with you in 
Des Moines.” 

“Kinda seems to me I have . . . something like it any¬ 
way, though maybe it was only for a line or two. Good 
idea, though. I’m going to write Dinky about it. Bet 
they could make a go of it.” 

“Oh, Ed, you funny old dear!” Arlie put her arms 
around his neck and kissed him. 

“Why am I ?” 

“Because you are. Always thinking of such things.” 

“Oh, you think it would go, do you?” 

She laughed herself into his arms and kissed him again. 
“Maybe it would, I don’t know, but you’re funny be¬ 
cause you think of it.” 


[368] 


“Better not kiss me again,” he warned her. “You’ll 
get my cold.” 

“Let me!” She smacked him vigorously. 

“Say, that ought to be worked into it? What? . 
Something like that, anyway. Where’s a pencil? I’m 
going to jot these down.” 

“You don’t need a pencil,” she said, rising. “I’ll fix 
you a dose of castor oil.” 

“Oh, don’t, Arlie, please. Honest, this isn’t anything. 
I’ll shake it off in a day or two. You save the castor oil 
for Gerald. Besides, I want to talk to you about the 
Isis. Fact is, reason I thought of that act was we need 
some more money. The pictures ain’t paying so well. I 
figured a lot while you was gone.” 

4 

Through the fall the attendance at the Isis dwindled, 
slightly but noticeably, and the result was even more 
perceptible in the books, for expenses did not fall. The 
crash of prices on the stock exchange was making itself 
felt more generally. 

“I guess I cut down too much,” Ed admitted one day 
many weeks later, “when we stopped getting that other 
money. Way things go you begin to see how bad the 
location really is. I was just lumping things together too 
much. You see, we got to draw ’em this way with some¬ 
thing big, and you can’t do it all the time. Wish I had 
the Isis where Bunchie is, I’d show him a thing or two. 
Way it is, there’s nothing of itself to draw ’em down here 
in the evenings. Business all goes the other direction. 
All the new buildings that are going up are over on 
Marshall Street. We don’t get much except them that’s 
got the Isis habit. You see darn’ few new faces, and 
the more corn the farmers burn the fewer we’ll see.” 

“Would it help to use serials, Ed?” 

[369] 


“No sir! Lower the tone of your house and you 
never get back. I wouldn’t think of that for a minute. 
The Isis is going to keep its rep’. Trouble is now, the 
old fans start from the other side of town and get 
drawed in at Bunchie’s and the others. All we got the 
other side of us is the workingmen.” 

“Can’t we get them? Why not play for them in our 
ads somehow?” 

“Yes, I thought of that. But the truth is, Arl, we 
got to go slow on ads now if we’re going to have any¬ 
thing to live on. We sunk too much cash when we didn’t 
need to, that’s all. I guess I overadvertised, too. My 
stuff don’t pull any more. . . . But anyway I don’t want 
my house stunk up with a lot of wops and bohunks. 
Damn ’em, I say!” 

Arlie resisted an “I told you so,” shunting its energy 
into: “It seems like our bungalow gets farther and 
farther off. I get to thinking sometimes it’d be a good 
thing to sell the Isis and get a home for once.” 

“Wha’d I do then ?” 

“Why you could—maybe you could be a projectionist. 
I’ll bet you’d be a good one.” 

“That’d be a hell of a bright idea, wouldn’t it! Gosh, 
I can hear Bunchie laugh now.” 

“Oh no, Ed. . . . Ugh! How could I think of it!” 
She went to him swiftly. “I didn’t mean it, Ed, honest 
I didn’t. I wouldn’t have you just that for anything.” 

“Sure?” He pulled her to his lap, placed an arm 
around her, and one hand on her knee. It was a home¬ 
like hand, she thought, and then tried not to think of it. 
“I love you, Ed,” she murmured quickly, darkening with 
her words what she had been about to think. “I love 
you.” 

His arm tightened around her in answer. “You’re a 
good kid, Arlie. I’m glad I got you for a wife.” 

[370] 


5 

In the next week Ed complained of another cold. His 
body ached, he said, and he felt “woozy.” Arlie sent 
him to bed and called a doctor, who diagnosed the case as 
influenza. Not serious now, he added, “but you must 
be very careful. Too many of these are going into pneu¬ 
monia.” 

Hastily Arlie called in Mrs. Gelke and went to have the 
prescriptions filled. She returned to find Ed fretting 
about the Isis. “Now look here, Ed, you forget about 
the Isis for a while. You been going there every day for 
years, and you need a vacation and you’re going to get it, 
that s all. I haven’t been around that place all these years 
for nothing. Every single thing I’ve done one time or 
another, and if I have to do them all for a while, what’s 
the difif? Besides, I don’t. You got a good projection¬ 
ist and a force that knows its business. Gelke will look 
after you and I’ll look after the Isis. Just forget it, turn 
over, and go to sleep.” 

Meekly he obeyed. 

“I’m glad Gerald’ll be at school,” she told Mrs. Gelke. 
“That’ll help some.” 

She wanted to stay with Ed, to nurse him herself, but 
knew that her presence would mean only another worry 
for him. He had always worried, even when for a little 
while some one other than herself had handled the money. 

The first day or two she found very difficult. Things 
that had seemed small in themselves filled every crevice of 
the day. She had no time to worry about her husband. 
Then she began to find her way about. “It’s just like 
dishes,” she told herself. “Get ’em scraped and piled and 
the rest is easy. It’s the confusion that discourages you. 
The first thing to do is to get rid of the confusion.” She 
listed, then, all the tasks she could think of, and went over 
the list with Johnson, the latest “projectionist.” The 

[371] 


larger number of duties she took upon herself, gave some 
to Johnson—who grumbled but accepted—and saw to it 
daily that everything was being done. The advertise¬ 
ments were hardest to do. First she went through Ed s 
files to find models. He had never been content to use 
the material sent him; always it had been changed or dis¬ 
carded. It was an unfamiliar and agonizing business, but 
it had to be done. The simple bookkeeping she dared not 
attempt, and telephoned the business college for a student 
to work nights. 

Satisfaction mingled with fear when Ed’s influenza 
passed into pneumonia. The deliberate organization of 
the work had prepared her for longer trouble. “Get a 
nurse,” she said, when the doctor told her. She felt weak 
and faint, yet about to be efficient. She knew that she 
had to keep the Isis running, and knew furthermore that 
she had to make it pay. 

Followed nights almost sleepless. Nights colored by 
the brightness of those hours when she would be called, 
or wake, and slip on an old kimono to wander in from her 
cot in the dining-room to see Ed. When she was at the 
Isis it seemed to her that she had not slept at all, that she 
had not been away from the theatre; and when she was at 
home the Isis was no more than a rainy glimpse of itself 
on its own screen. All her being was then in the room 
where Ed lay sick, and the only reality was the nurse’s 
white uniform and peaked cap, Mrs. Gelke’s noiseless and 
productive visits, and Ed’s long form beneath the bed¬ 
clothes, his delirious face and hot hands. 

The crisis passed in a long, bright nightmare, when all 
she could see was Ed’s confused hair above the bearded, 
oblivious face; when all she could hear was his breathing, 
and all she could do was to sit in aching anxiety by his 
side, wanting to hold his hand. She roused herself at 
last from a daze of sleep through which everything had 
persisted in hectic particularity. The doctor was in the 

[372] 


room. “It’s all right now, Mrs. Somers. He’s going to 
pull through, barring a relapse, of course. Thought we 
were going to lose him once. Better get some sleep 
now.” 

She fumbled her way through the dining-room and 
across the hall to Mrs. Gelke’s door, where she rapped 
softly, then louder at the silence within. Presently Mrs. 
Gelke opened the door. “You want me? Is he worse?” 

“No, the crisis is past, the doctor says. . . . Thought 
you’d like to know.” 

“That’s good, that’s fine,” she heard Mrs. Gelke say, 
and started back to her cot. 

Just why had she roused the poor woman, anyway? 
The morning would have been soon enough. She 
couldn’t tell. Wearily she crawled between the cotton 
blankets—there hadn’t been time for sheets lately. He 
was going to get well. That was what she had been 
fighting for. The victory was won. Was she too tired 
to care, to be glad a little, or wasn’t she glad ? But how 
could she be anything else but glad ? And her father was 
getting better, her mother had written; and Phil was mar¬ 
ried. . . . 


6 

In the next few days she went often to Ed’s room, 
oftener than her time conveniently permitted. She was 
trying to discover in his wasted and lengthened face, in 
the touch of him, some compensation other than the grati¬ 
tude he offered. 

“You been awful good to me, Arlie. Hadn’t been 
for you I’d never of pulled through.” 

“I didn’t do much, Ed. It was the doctor and the 
nurse and Gelke.” 

“Yes you did. I didn’t have to worry about the Isis. 
Just kept saying to myself whenever I thought of it, 

[373] 


‘Arlie’s running it, Arlie’s running it,’ and you were, 
too.” 

“Yes, I’ve really made it go, Ed. But we’ll talk of that 
later. You got to get well now, and worrying won’t help 
you.” 

But for other reasons she did not want to talk to him 
of the Isis. Unknown to him, on the expiration of a con¬ 
tract, she had changed the film service, substituting more 
reels of purely slapstick comedy, western material, and 
the perilous serials Ed had always avoided. To advertise 
the new films she had reduced the space in the Gazette 
and Tribune to mere notices, but had distributed handbills 
throughout the poorer and more congested streets. On 
two evenings, between six and seven, she had herself gone 
to the long line of mouldy lodging houses and dim-eyed 
restaurants on Milman Street, seeing to it that each bill 
reached a person or was left in some greasy but con¬ 
spicuous place. Later it had been a satisfaction to note 
how many faces she recalled—and greeted with a smile. 

With the help of a sign-painter the lobby had become a 
flamboyant maze of crude colors, in the center of which 
she sat each evening, her face pale, eager and sharp be¬ 
hind the plate glass of the ticket booth. She would smile, 
now and then, at some laborer, and sell him a box seat at 
thirty-five cents. On one night she almost filled the 
boxes; and thereafter it was a game played again with a 
smile, a greeting, and fingers that hesitated between the 
two rolls of tickets. She found, too, that a touch on the 
sign-painter’s shoulder, and a tacit permission to lean 
close to her when she went to examine the progress of 
his work, subtracted dollars from his bills. 

It was chiefly in subtraction, she found when she ex¬ 
amined the accounts, that money was made. The at¬ 
tendance had increased, yes, but they didn’t have the 
packed houses of former days. On the other hand there 
was less to be paid out—less for films, for ushers, for 

[374] 


newspaper advertising; and the money that had formerly 
gone into the “Isis Screen” just about met the expenses of 
handbills and signs. 

When Ed called her one day as she was leaving she 
turned back to him in fear, thinking he must have learned 
in some way of the changes at the Isis. 

“There’s something I been wanting to tell you, Arlie,” 
he began, looking at her breast and not her eyes. “I 
guess maybe you know what it’s about . . . don’t you?’” 
He looked up briefly, and her heart beat more rapidly. 
Had he found out? Had Gelke told him? She was glad 
the nurse had gone. 

“I think maybe I know.” 

“I thought you would. That makes it easier in a way, 
and in a way it don’t. ... I didn’t want to tell you be¬ 
fore. I was afraid you’d just pretend to forgive me— 
out of pity, you know.” 

“Forgive you?” 

“Yes, but I wanted you to know just how much, and 
how little, too, considering, there was to forgive.” 

“Yes . . . ?” 

“About that Houghton girl.” 

“Seraphine?” 

“Yes—Seraphine Houghton.” He could not seem to 
speak the given name alone. “I been wanting to tell you 
a long time. I don’t suppose you’ll believe me, though. 
There wasn’t anything you didn’t see, nothing. All there 
was happened right in that room there”—he pointed. 
“Nothing when I took her home, honest to God there 
wasn’t, Arlie. I was too tight to go straight as it was; 
and when we got there—why some one come out for her„ 
Her brother, maybe.” 

She smiled. “And if some one hadn’t come out I sup¬ 
pose there would have been something.” She wished the 
words back as soon as she had said them. 

“I don’t know, Arlie. ... I was tight, I can’t telL, 

[375] 


can’t remember very well. I won’t say as to that. I 
only know what happened and what didn’t happen, and 
I’m giving you the straight dope on that. Funny thing, 
too ... it should all of been at the Isis and in that 
room there. . . .” 

“Well, don’t worry about it. I believe you all right 
. . . and I’m glad you told me.” 

Did her words sound as hollow to Ed as they did to 
herself? She tried to reinforce their effect with a kiss 
and a pat, and puzzled over the question of why she was 
disappointed, a little, that he had told her. It made him 
too much like Gerald, confessing some minor sin. Did 
something in her want him to have been unfaithful com¬ 
pletely? Or to have bluffed her with denial? Did she 
no longer care for him? Was he only a larger Gerald to 
her now? And if so, what was the use of it all, and to 
what had she come ? 


8 

It was the day after Ed got up for the first time but 
was still confined to the rooms that Mat returned again. 
Arlie had been sitting in the little office which she had 
made for herself out of the “Ladies’ Rest Room” that Ed 
had installed when the Isis was remodelled, but which had 
seldom been used. She had taken off the brass sign, sold 
one of the wicker rockers, and put the books and the old 
typewriter on the cheap and fragile writing desk. On 
this she was pounding out a letter when she looked up and 
saw Mat standing in the doorway. 

“Well hello, stranger! Come into my parlor said the 
spider to the fly, if you can get in. There’ll be room 
for you in that rocker if you don’t rock too much. Come 
on in. . . . Don’t stand there like a ninny. Aren’t you 
going to shake hands with me after all this time?” She 
rose to offer him a cool hand. With a mumble he shook 

[376] 


it and sat down, placing his hat beside him on the green- 
carpeted floor. 

“Better take your overcoat off, it’s hot in here.” 

“No, can’t stay long. Just dropped in to say hello.” 

“Why didn’t you then?” 

He looked at her foolishly and bit his nails. 

“Well, aren’t you going to talk to me? Here, when I 
haven’t seen you for I don’t know how long—two years 
anyway, and it seems like five.” 

“Are you -glad to see me ?” he asked with nervous 
abruptness. 

“Of course I’m glad to see you. What a question! 
But tell me about yourself. What you been doing?” 

“Selling—same as usual. But what are you doing? 
Making money for the old boy?” 

“You mean Ed? He’s been awful sick, you know. I 
had to run the Isis and home too. It’s fagged me out a 
little, but now Ed’s better I kinda like it. I don’t want 
Ed sick, but I’ll hate to give it up when he comes back.” 

“You musta made a go of it, then. How’d you do it?” 

She told him. “Trouble is, though,” she concluded, 
“Ed’s going to be struck all of a heap when he tumbles to 
the pictures I been showing. That’s where I’d like to 
have you to help me, Mat.” 

“Me? How?” 

“By helping me convince him that I’ve done the best 
thing—showing this rough and wooly stuff.” 

“I’d think the receipts would convince him quick 
enough. Most men’ll listen to what money has to say.” 

“The trouble is, Ed won’t. He has ideals. It’s a 
dream show-shop he’s running, not the Isis. I run the 
Isis.” 

“Yes, and damn’ well too, I bet. If he don’t see it he’s 
not worth bothering with.” 

“What do you mean by that?” 

“I guess you know what I mean all right.” 

[377] 


Flashingly she erased the beginning perception of what 
he did mean and looked at him, sitting dolefully erect and 
stiff in the rocking-chair. He was thinner in body, yet 
his head seemed larger, and there was a stolid glitter in 
his eyes. 

“No,” she answered slowly, “I don’t know what you 
mean . . . and I don’t think I ever will.” 

“Oh yes you will,” he said, and squirmed a little. 

“Mat,” she laughed, “are you sitting on a tack? You 
act that way.” 

“Maybe I am,” he replied, mournfully smiling, “but 
you shouldn’t offer me a chair with a tack in it.” 

Arlie turned to the typewriter. “You come back when 
you’re feeling cheerfuller. You really got to help me in 
this, that’s all there is to it. And if you’re not going to, 
why maybe . . . maybe you’d better not come back at 
all.” 

In a voice thickened with repression he answered, “I’ll 
come back all right, but my cheerfulness is going to 
depend on you, and a lot of other things too.” 

Then, with one hand on the jamb of the door as he 
stood just outside, he added: “Don’t worry, I’ll come 
back all right.” 

His quickening steps crossed the foyer, and her ears 
felt the puff of the closing outer door. His words re¬ 
called the end of the letter he had written. She had al¬ 
most forgotten that. Bitterness contracted her. Was she 
never again to find that gleaming quiet she had known? 
Crude discordance, harsh colors: brown, blue, crimson. 

. . . She ripped her letter from the typewriter and went 
home. 


[378] 


CHAPTER XXVI 


MAT 

i 

If Mat would not help her she would have to help her¬ 
self. She made Ed lie down, and worked, futilely, about 
the house. At last she collected some mending and sat 
by his side. How might she approach it? For the re¬ 
mainder of the morning, between remarks, she pondered; 
at times almost breaking into it. 

‘'What you thinking about? Got something on your 
mind ?” he inquired. 

“No . . . nothing.” 

“Aren’t things going all right at the Isis?” 

“Of course they are. Stop worrying.” 

The next morning she lingered after breakfast until 
Gerald had been long at school. She would tell him; yet 
at the point of speech she had courage for only a com¬ 
promise: “You know, Ed, I been thinking . . . about 
the Isis. I been watching the crowds we get, and the 
people that pass outside, and I been thinking that if we 
took another kind of film we could make more money. 
They want more action, more movement, more slapstick 
stuff, and not so many millionaires’ dining-rooms; and 
we’d save money on the film rent.” 

“That’s where you’re off, though. That’s what they 
do want; it’s the only way they’ll ever get it. They lap it 
up.” 


[379] 


“But they haven't been lapping it. You know well as 
I we haven’t been getting the houses we used to get. It’s 
those who’re a little nearer to it that want that, those that 
really got something and want a lot more.” 

“You’re off again. It’s them that never can get it that 
want it most. We got a bum location, that’s all.” 

“But Ed, maybe they don’t want it all the time. 
Maybe they like it once in a while—we can’t get ’em all 
the time at that. The other shows have too much of 
what we give, and have it in brighter places, specially 
now that Bunchie has remodelled and all. He’s making 
an awful splurge. But it seems to me if we could get 
them for the other kind of thing, and be the only house 
giving it regularly, why we’d always get ’em whenever 
they wanted that; and we wouldn’t be spending so much, 
either, as I said before.” 

“No sir, I won’t listen to it. If I can’t run the best 
kind of house with the best kind of pictures, I’m through, 
that’s all. I’ll run a chop suey house first. Gosh ... it 
makes me sick to think of it even. . . .” He walked to 
the bed, weakly, and lay down. 

Arlie left. She had to get away in order to think. 
Now it was worse than ever. Why hadn’t she told him 
outright what she had done and how much the Isis was 
clearing? As it was she had only roused a thick, dull 
opposition, the mastering of which might really make him 
ill again. 

When he brought up the subject himself the next 
morning she argued, fell silent, appeared to acquiesce. 

Mat came in again on Friday and she told him of the 
situation. “About what I’d thought would happen,” he 
said. “It’d only have been worse if you’d told him the 
truth. He can’t stand it to look at facts or figures. 
Never could. That’s why he went broke in Sioux City. 
You can’t tell me anything about Ed. Know him bet- 
ter’n you do.” 


[380] 


“I wish you wouldn’t talk that way, Mat.” 

“Why not ?”—aggressively. 

“Because, he’s my husband . . . and I love him.” 
(Why had she added the last?) 

Mat sat up straighter than ever. His words tumbled: 
“Yes, he’s your husband all right, but don’t tell me that 
you love him. It’s absolutely, teetotally impossible for 
you to love him. Furthermore, you never did love him, 
really, and I’m damn’ sure he never loved you. He mar¬ 
ried you for the money you had, that’s what he did. He 
couldn’t love anybody but himself, that man couldn’t.” 

“Mat, you’re talking too much. I do love Ed.” 

“You don’t—” 

“But I do. Look how I’ve worked for him, and 
humored him, and cared for him. Think I’d do that for 
a man I didn’t love? You’re miles off.” 

“I tell you, you don’t love him. You pity him, that’s 
all. You pity him.” 

Light, shattering around her, went out. “I ... I do 
. . . love him, I mean. I tell you I do,” she flung at him. 
“Get out. Get out of here, out of the room.” 

Words burned from his eyes. She could not look at him, 
but gestured blindly, as if he would fly before her mov¬ 
ing hands. She began to weep and between her sobs she 
pleaded, “Get out!” and more weakly, “go—go on. I 
don’t want you here.” 

He stood glaring down at her. “All right,” he said, 
“I’ll go, but remember, I’m coming back. I’m coming 
back Sunday morning. Right to this room. And you’re 
coming here. We’re going to talk this out. Do you 
hear ? Sunday morning.” 

“We’re not . . . we’re not . . . we . . .” She ges¬ 
tured feebly, and as the noise of his footsteps lessened, 
added: “I’m not, I mean. I’m not. I don’t care what 
you do.” She wanted, in some fashion, utterly to destroy 
the “we” she had used: “I’m not, I’m not,” she repeated 

[38i] 


and repeated, trying to cross the “we” out of existence, 
but she succeeded only in rendering it more elusively there 
than ever. 


2 

Sunday was coming too quickly, she realized on Satur¬ 
day morning. 

“What you look at me so funny for?” Ed asked. 

“Didn’t know I was,” she responded, and knew as she 
spoke that she had been following his every expression 
and movement, searching. 

“Any one’d think I was tottering around, the way you 
watch me. Makes me wonder if I am getting well, and 
when I get to thinking about it I want to lie down. Guess 
I will, too.” 

She sat down beside him, stroking his hand as if she 
could call back to it some vitality it missed. 

“It’s all right, Ed,” she murmured absently. 

“What is?” 

. . . “About Seraphine. I know you love me, just 
me . . . and I do you.” 

Weariness sheathed his face. “I’m glad you feel that 
way, Arlie. I ... it was hard to tell you, but I sorta 
felt I had to.” 

“I know, Ed. . . ” 

“Let’s not talk about it . . . I’m tired, sort of.” He 
turned his face to the wall. 

“Poor boy, you must be. You mustn’t try to get up 
yet.” 

She stretched out by his side, on top of the quilt he had 
drawn over himself, and stroked his forehead. “I love 
you so much, Ed, I love you so much. ... Not even 
Gerald means anything to me. Just you . . . and I 
want you to get well quick.” 

Reaching up for her hand he held it, saying nothing 
until she withdrew it and rose. “I got to get back.” 

[382] 


She wanted him to get well, yes, for more than one 
reason: for himself, and for her, that she might disen¬ 
tangle her feeling for him when he was well from what 
she felt when he was sick. As she walked back to the 
Isis an unreasoning irritation grew in her—he was get¬ 
ting well so slowly. She tried to fight it back, to choke 
and harass it out of her. All that Saturday afternoon 
and evening she wrestled with it, and, for wavering blind 
moments was herself held and thrown. 

At breakfast on Sunday she attempted again to win 
him over to the change of pictures. She explained, elabor¬ 
ated, pleaded, predicted ruin. 

“Arlie!” he shouted at her finally, “I tell you once and 
for all I won’t listen to it! You don’t need to talk about 
it again. Never! do you hear! It’s the last thing on 
earth I’ll do!” 

“Well, it’s not the last thing I'll do, I can tell you that, 
Ed Somers. Before I’d see my wife and her baby 
starve, or live in a miserable little hovel over a damn’ 
store! No sir! Or before I’d let my husband go with¬ 
out care when he’s sick. I don’t know what you are, 
but I know damn’ well what I am. How do you think 
we’re going to pay the nurse, and the doctor bills? On 
what we were making before? I tell you no. But you 
can bet they’re going to be paid all right.” 

“We can pay ’em with the Liberty Loans.” 

“We can’t do nothing of the kind. Furthermore, I got 
the nurse paid already.” 

“How’d you do it?” 

“Slapstick and western stuff, and handbills on Milman 
Street when I started the serial. I took some of ’em 
there myself. That’s how. I changed when the contract 
ran out, before you began to get well even. And we’re 
making money. See?” 

He looked at her out of sunken dull eyes. “Oh,” he 
said. 

[383] 


She threw on her coat and hat. “I’m going down to 
the Isis. When I come back I’ll tell you how much we’ve 
made.” 

Justified, she went, but knew as she went that she 
would have gone in any case, that she could in no way 
have resisted going. 


3 

She waited for Mat in the bright miniature office. Dull 
occasional sounds of automobiles passing along the street, 
and now and then a gleam of words penetrated the loud 
silence of the house. The Isis was peopled that morning 
with ghostly audiences and a scurry of dreams, mingled of 
all those folk of light and shadow who had entered the 
unreal rooms on the screen, galloped across the imper¬ 
manent white roads and rising hills, all to fade out with 
the light. Ghost of the real, ghosts of the unreal, blended 
to the shadowy harmony that was the Isis. As a quiet¬ 
ing whisper it lulled her, and she faced Mat, when he 
came, with a still face. 

“I knew you’d be here,” he announced, laying his coat 
and hat across the typewriter before sitting down. 

“Did you ?” 

“Yep. And I knew I’d be here; that we both would. 
Couldn’t help it, could we?” 

“I don’t know. I suppose not.” She could not look 
at him, but at last she forced herself to look, through a 
trembling confusion, and knew by a subtle reach of in¬ 
stinct that as all was blurring away for her, so it was 
for him. He edged his chair closer. 

.... “No, we come to talk, Mat. . . . Don’t. . . .” 

“Don’t what?” 

“Don’t come closer. . . .” She could hardly speak the 
words, but he had nevertheless come, his arm was around 
her and she had given way, letting her head fall upon his 

[384] 


chest. He was half kneeling, half standing, by her 
chair. 

“It’s no use, girl. Why fight it? We can’t help it. 
We were made for each other. You know I love you. 
I always have, especially since that night, when you al¬ 
most got away from us.” 

A sob rose in her, followed by others. “It’s too hard, 
Mat. I can’t explain. Don’t ask me to. It’s too much 
for me. I can’t see around it.” 

“See around what, dear?” 

“You, and Ed, and Gerald. And my father’s dying. 
Herb’s dead. I hardly know Gerald any more. And 
the Shumans . . .” 

“Who’re the Shumans?” 

“Herb’s . . . my first husband’s folks.” She sat up 
and pushed him gently away. “Sit down. I don’t know 
what’s the matter with me.” She shivered and they were 
silent. 

“Why did you have to come, Mat ?” 

“I couldn’t help it. Ever since that night, I’ve loved 
you. When I saw how little he cared for you, my God, 
I couldn’t stand it.” 

“But he does, he loves me.” 

“Looked like it that night, didn’t it? Nice time he had 
with Seraphina, or whatever her name was.” 

“But that didn’t mean anything. He confessed it all 
to me.” 

“Confessed? When you could see it right before your 
eyes? Hell of a lot a confession like that means!” 

“But he didn’t know how much I’d drunk myself. And 
he'was drunk. But what he confessed was—that there 
wasn’t any more than I saw.” 

“Oh—he confessed that, did he ? Confessed he hadn’t 
anything to confess. . . .” His laughter was forced and 
raucous. 

“I don’t mean confess, I . . . oh, can’t you see ? It s 

[ 385 ] 


all so muddled that way. I know it sounds silly, the way 
1 tel1 ” 

“Well . . . have you 'confessed’ about the Isis yet?” 

“I told him this morning.” 

“Wha’d’ he do?” 

“Nothing, just looked at me. Said 'Oh’. ...» came 
down here.” 

“Didn’t thank you for making it pay any, did he?” 

“No.” 

“Thought not. And yet you go around pitying him 
because he’s sick and can’t play around with things like 
he used to. That’s all there is to your love for him. 
Pity . . . my Lord! I wouldn’t have a woman I loved 
pitying me instead of loving me.” 

“Pity lasts longer, Mat.” 

He started to reply, but closed his mouth and swal¬ 
lowed. “Humph. . . . Lasts longer, does it? . . . But 
what’s it worth while it does last? How’d you like to 
have Ed pity you instead of love you ?” 

“I couldn’t stand it.” 

“Then think what you’re offering him. And what he’s 
got to offer you, when he don’t either love you or pity 
you neither?” 

She made no reply. 

“Arlie, look here”—obediently she raised her eyes—“I 
got something to tell you. Love wipes pity out, see. 
Wrings it dry. Tosses it away. Ain’t no room left for 
it. Love burns up everything else, I tell you. Makes it 
ashes. No—look at me. And I love you, and Arlie, 
down in your heart you love me. You know you do. 
You’re going to come to me now. Why? Because you 
love me. You can’t help it. You’re coming, do you 
hear!” She felt herself rise and stand and tremble. 
Reaching hands. “See, I told you.” He met her, and 
she clung to him sobbing so that her body shook and 
shook in his arms. 


[386] 



“There, there, girl. You’re all right now. You’re 
with me, and I’m with you. Don’t cry now. It’s all all 
right. . . .Just look up and kiss me. You haven’t 
kissed me yet.’’ 

Her face lifted to his, but her lips did not move in re¬ 
sponse. “Tell me, Arlie, tell me you love me.” 

“I can’t. ... I don’t know what love is, any more. I 
don’t know what anything is. Maybe I came because I 
don’t love you, because I don’t love anybody.” 

He drew her to the chair and held her. For hours, it 
seemed to her, she was flexibly passive in his arms, sink¬ 
ing beneath his handling into a deeper and deeper and 
delirious shame. 

At last she roused herself and was free. “Mat, it 
can’t go on.” Stupor was giving way to action. “I can’t 
go on with you. I don’t know why. But I can’t. And 
things can’t go farther than they have this morning. 
That isn’t enough. But they’re never going that far 
again. I feel like I wanted to sink into the earth and be 
swallowed up. How can I go home now, to Ed?” 

“You don’t need to.” 

“You’re a fool.” 

“Well, we’ll see. . . . Take your time. Think it over. 
Listen, though, I can’t be coming back here so much. 
Suppose you write me in Des Moines.” He handed her a 
card, which she tossed on the desk. 

“Just think it over, that’s all I ask. How’d you like 
only pity yourself, and how are you going to like having 
neither love nor pity? Just write me the answer to them 
questions, will you?” 

Snow had whitened the street, and the reflected bril¬ 
liance of the sun dazzled their eyes with sharp colors as 
they emerged from the Isis and separated. 


[387] 


CHAPTER XXVII 


SOLITAIRE 

I 

On her return she flung together a hasty dinner, waiting 
until she had it entirely ready before she went to the 
bedroom door to call Ed. There was no response from 
the blanket-muffled form. “Come on, Ed, dinner’s 
ready.” 

“Don’t want any. Not hungry.” 

“Oh, I think you’d better eat something. Just a little.” 

“Go on. Let me alone.” 

“All right. Come on then, Gerald, well eat.” 

Gerald, flat on his stomach before a book, his heels 
kicking in the air, didn’t even glance up as he turned the 
page. “Don’t want none neither.” 

“For that matter,” she thought, “I don’t either, but I 
suppose Ed better. No use getting dinner for no one.” 
But after a few mouthfuls she ceased; she simply was 
not hungry, and there was too much pressing for thought. 

“Mother, can I take my sled over to Thirteenth Street 
hill to slide this afternoon ?” Gerald brought his book to 
the table. 

“Oh, I suppose so. Will you be careful though?” 

“Yeh, sure. I want something to eat now. Anything 
left?” 

“Lots.” She shoved toward him the dish of fried po¬ 
tatoes. It was easier not to have Ed there; he would 

[388] 


complicate matters just by his silent presence. Yet his 
sulkiness oppressed her, clouding the tangle of everything 
else. Would it really make him sick again? These in¬ 
fluenza cases that developed into pneumonia, she had read, 
often left unsuspected disorders. This conflict, by lower¬ 
ing his resistance, might bring one of them out. What 
would it be? 

If only he would talk, telling her all he thought, call¬ 
ing her names, inventing fresh wrongs, as her father and 
mother had used to do. . . . If he would only talk and 
relieve himself she might then, with the help of the Isis 
books, convince him that under the circumstances, with 
bills mounting and decisions to make without his advice, 
she had done the best her lack of experience had per¬ 
mitted. 

Lack of experience? But what had prevented him 
from making the money, instead of playing around in a 
long delusion ? Five years were enough to give any man 
a chance. He’d had a chance with the Isis; then she had 
taken hers. He’d have to come round, that was all, if she 
were to go on with him. . . . 

If she were to go on with him? . . . But she couldn’t 
do anything else. In some way or other he’d have to 
find out that she’d done the best she could. Time and 
health would do it. Some night soon she’d get him down 
to the Isis, and the sight of the fuller house would touch 
him to activity again, he’d begin to have ideas, and be 
himself instead of only a bigger boy who didn’t want to 
come to his meals. And as for Mat: well, Mat and Sera- 
phine about cancelled each other, though she’d hardly be 
so foolish as to tell Ed, as he had told her—though he 
hadn’t told her anything she hadn’t known, as Mat had 
pointed out in the course of hinting at a great deal that 
she didn’t know and that Ed hadn’t mentioned. She 
couldn’t tell Ed, anyway. She wasn’t in love with Mat, 
and being in his arms made her not so much aware of 

[ 389 ] 


him as of herself. She was alive again, for the first time 
in years. 

Here, as she remembered, her partial contentment, 
strangely arisen from what had been shame, validated her, 
ceasing only when she continued trying to reason, or to 
say of Mat that she did or didn’t “love” him; for the 
only way in which she could think of him was to call 
herself “in love” or “not in love.” Yet away from him 
she preserved only a grotesque image of his hungrily re¬ 
ceptive face and the broken desire in his eyes. 

Fundamentally it was not Mat but the result of him 
that she ruminated. As an unidentified instrument he 
floodingly released in her what had been long forgotten, 
and was now, under his manipulation, recalled to startle 
her—until consciousness advanced through her body, and 
her mind was a remembrance of the secret and vital colors 
of darkness. She had gone to him, in a moment, not to 
create a new relation but to remember. Finally, that 
would be insufficient, but in that direction, at present, she 
did not gaze. 


2 

On Wednesday she urged Ed to come to the Isis with 
her: “Just to watch things and to see the books. I 
want to show ’em to you. You’re well enough, the doc¬ 
tor said you were. Weeks you been well now.” 

He reshuffled the deck of cards with which he had been 
playing solitaire. “No, I’m not going. You started it 
and you can finish it. I’ll wash dishes, do housework. 
. . . In fact, I’m the new maid at the Somers’s.” 

“You’re the damn’ fool at the Somers’s, you mean.” 
She slammed the door and ran down the stairs, but on the 
sidewalk she slackened her pace. Had she been cruel? 
He didn’t have all his strength back yet. “But he is,” she 
exclaimed to herself. “He’s a fool, fool, fool. He’s a 
fool, fool, fool.” And to that rhythm she walked past 

[390] 


the familiar bricks and the billboards—crude with black 
print, mucous pink, analine blue—until she reached the 
Isis. 

3 

Monday brought a telegram from Phil. Her father 
was undoubtedly dying this time. She placed the tele¬ 
gram on Ed’s triangle of outspread cards. “You’ll have 
to take hold now, she informed him. “You can see I 
can t go and leave it with Johnson. I don’t trust him and 
neither do you, really, outside the projection room.” 

Nope, you can leave it with him. I said I wouldn’t 
help and I won’t.” He rose, as if to end the dispute, and 
walked to the window. 

“But my father’s dying. Can’t you understand that? 
He’s dying, I tell you.” 

“He was the last time.” 

“If you knew Phil you’d never say that. Phil 
wouldn’t waste any money on a telegram to send me a 
lie.” 

“Who sent it last time ?” 

“Who sent it? It was a letter from ma, but what does 
it matter? Oh, you fool, you fool, you damn’, damn’ 
fool!” 

She returned to the Isis. Stubbornness locked itself 
in her. She would not go, not until Ed was seated in 
the box office, putting in the cash drawer himself the 
quarters that would come nearer to filling it. 

Not on that day nor the next did either speak, except 
to Gerald. The time wore heavily on, and Arlie spent 
much of it on the street between home and the Isis, re¬ 
turning to the rooms frequently in the hope that Ed had 
relented, that his stubbornness might have worn itself 
down. It was not so much that she wanted to go to 
Coon Falls as that she wanted Ed at the Isis. 

In the rooms she exhibited various pretexts for her 

[391] 


return: a forgotten handkerchief, a dose of cough medi¬ 
cine—elaborately taken in the dining-room while he bent 
over his cards—a broken shoe lace which had to be re¬ 
strung, and which she had cut her fingers in breaking 
just before she went up the stairs. But he said nothing, 
and each time she slammed herself out of the room. 
On the last visit she made, on the second day of 
their silence, he was not there. She inquired of Mrs. 
Gelke. Yes, he had gone out; had his coat and muffler 
on. 

When she returned late that night he was in bed. 
So pervasively occupied had she been in breaking his 
obstinacy that as she lay in hard silence beside him she 
had forgotten the occasion of it all. It was a condition 
without cause. At breakfast another telegram reminded 
her: “Father died this morning at five-thirty. Funeral 
Friday afternoon.” She decided at once not to go until 
Thursday night, thus missing as much of the horribly 
vacant interval as possible. She knew that interval, and 
knew also that there was no debt she could pay her father 
by a prolonged presence. At night she packed a few 
articles in the suitcase and put it in the closet, where Ed 
would probably not see it. She had not told him of the 
telegram and she did not intend to tell him until just 
before she left. 

In the quiet of the night, while she waited for the tears 
that she felt ought to come, the long minutes swept over 
her, measured by the breathing of Ed and of Gerald, one 
heavy, one light. Gerald’s breathing, coming from his 
bed around the corner in an ell of the room, she could 
just distinguish. Ed’s was heavy and near. At times 
they synchronized, then ranged themselves at irregular 
intervals, and distantly rhymed again. Her father’s 
breath had stopped. Her own would, some time . . . 
when? ... It didn’t matter; might as well stop now. 
No—life might hold something yet. . . . Mat? . . . 

[392] 


Maybe. . . . Herself anyway. She’d know, some time. 
She felt like crying now, but not for her father. 

4 

She had Gerald meet her at six o’clock at the Isis and 
took him to a restaurant for dinner. 4< Was Ed going 
to eat at Gelke s ? she asked Gerald when he came. He 
often did now, paying her a sum she was glad to get. 

“Guess so.” 

“What was he doing?” 

“Making things with cards.” 

“Did he say anything?” 

“Uh-uh. . . . Mother, don’t you like Ed any more?” 

She looked down at his face, a wide-eyed miniature of 
his father, with a look about the eyes, however, that was 
hers. Ed had often pointed it out. “Of course I like 
him. I’m busy, that’s all. What did you do at school 
to-day ?” 

They ascended the stairs just before seven o’clock. 
“How’d you like to stay at Gelke’s till Ed comes for you ? 
Mother has to go away tonight, dear, on the train; and 
she spoke to Gelke, so it’s all right.” 

“Where you going?” 

“I’ll tell you about it some other time. And when I 
come back I’ll bring you something nice to play with.” 

“Will you bring me some skates?” 

“Yes, Ell bring them. Here we are. Just run along 
in, and good-bye.” She kissed him, and for once, pos¬ 
sibly because the hall was dark, he kissed her unhesi- 
tantly, frankly, and his young lips were sweet and cold, 
Then he was running in to tell Gelke of the skates. His 
hands worked at the buckles of his coat as he talked, 
Gelke’s door closed, and she opened her own. 

Ed was still playing solitaire on the dining-room table. 
She went past him without a word, reappeared with her 

[393] 


suitcase, and sat down beside him. “Time for solitaire’s 
up, Ed. Read this.” She brought out of her pocket 
the last wrinkled telegram and spread it before him. 
Pack in hand he read it and recommenced his count. 

“Time up,” she said. “I’m going. Going on the 
eight-ten, and if you don’t take charge of the Isis no one 
will. It’s your show-shop, not mine. I haven’t said a 
word to Johnson, you’ll have to do that yourself. I’m 
through. And if you’re not running it by the time I 
get back it’ll have to run itself.” 

He held a red jack poised above a red queen, then let 
it drop to the pack, and the pack and his hands to the 
table. “All right,” he said, pushing the cards away, 
“you win. I can’t even beat solitaire.” 

He struggled into his overcoat, and not finding his hat 
put on one of Gerald’s stocking caps, stretching it over 
his head to a snug fit. She hadn’t seen him in his over¬ 
coat since the previous winter; it looked much too big 
for him. 

Silently they neared the Isis, and in the glare of the 
light she saw that his face bristled with a three or four 
days’ beard. “Sorry I didn’t tell you in time to shave,” 
she said. 

“Don’t matter,” he answered, turning in and leaving 
her. “It won’t keep away any the roughnecks we’re 
playing to now.” She paused, watching him advance 
across the lighted lobby, a certain savageness animating 
his gaunt figure, so clumsily and loosely covered in the 
baggy coat, and coming to so absurd a point in the 
stretched blue stocking cap. Then the doors swung 
shut. 

She turned, hesitated, went slowly back to the rooms, 
where she moved about as if her eyes were focussed on 
some object beyond the walls. Moving as in a dream 
she cleared a space on the table by shoving back the cards 
and wrote: 


[394] 


“Dear Mat: 

"I’ll arrlve in Des Moines sometime between six and 
seven on Saturday night at the Northwestern station. Meet 
me then and we’ll go to dinner. 

“Arlie.” 


On her way to the train she mailed the note. 

5 

“Minor, Minor,” the brakeman cried. 

It seemed hours to Arlie since she had come forward 
to the chair car when the Pullman had been detached, 
yet it had been only three stations ago. She was still an 
hour and a half from Coon Falls. The name “Minor” 
recalled to her that she was nearing Finley. She had 
risen early so that she would not miss the town. Pos¬ 
sibly she could see the bungalow where she and Herb had 
lived, or the bank. Finley was the next station. 

It came, a gray disturbance in the landscape, a thick¬ 
ening of barren trees, a stretch of huddling houses. She 
strained nearer the window. No, she couldn’t see the 
bungalow; it was hidden by the blue-gray Wentling 
house. Anyway, she would be able to see the bank where 
Herb had worked. When the train crossed Main Street 
she could see that. 

The car in which she rode stopped squarely in front 
of the station. A short procession of people strung 
along the side of the car. Voices rose. The drayman 
sauntered by. She heard the slam of trunks. Maroon 
boards of the station—why didn’t they go on ? There: 
yes. Main Street, and the bank, two Fords at the curb, 
and the dray going up the street with a single trunk. 
And there was the drug store where she had seen Ed 
that day, and the grocery next door where she had bought 
the butter. But it was impossible that she had ever been 
there, that she had lived in this town almost a year. It 

[395] 


had to her only the uncanny familiarity of a town to 
which one moves knowing it is going to become familiar. 
In the years between, through the war and all, it had 
gone on, being itself; and she not of it. It was actual 
but woven through with presences less real than ghosts. 

“Well, if it ain’t Mrs. Shuman!” 

Arlie started, and looked around at a woman standing 
by her seat, travelling-bag in hand. 

“I’m going to sit right down by you. Funny we’d 
meet again this way.” 

“Oh, it’s . . . Mrs. Weaver!” 

“Sure, didn’t you recognize me?” 

“Why yes, of course. I was just startled, thinking 
about something else.” 

“Where you going? Up to Lawson?” 

“No, Coon Falls. My father’s dead. Going to his 
funeral.” 

Mrs. Weaver condoled as she settled herself. “Going 
up to Mapleton myself for a few days. . . . It’s so far I 
was just dreading this trip, but now we can have quite a 
chat.” 

Mrs. Weaver chatted. All Arlie could do was to ask 
questions about people who were little more than names. 
When Mrs. Weaver turned from them to ask Arlie about 
herself some vague instinct of defence asserted itself: 
she was working in Grand Forks, in a moving picture 
show; had been running the show, in fact, during the 
illness of the proprietor; she didn’t know but that she 
might start out in the business for herself. Yes, Gerald 
had been going to school all year. ... Of her marriage 
to Ed she did not speak at all, and was largely indiffer¬ 
ent to all Mrs. Weaver had to say until the latter broke 
across a short developing silence with lowered but eager 
voice. “Oh! I forgot to tell you about Gracia Wentling! 
You know what a churchwoman her mother is? Well, 
Gracia had a baby. Her mother almost went crazy.” 

[396] 


“Gracia! That little thing! Why, she used to take 
care of Gerald!” 

“Little! But my dear, you haven’t seen her for five 
years. She’s twenty, anyhow. And she won’t tell who 
the father is, though everybody knows. At least they 
think they do.” 

“Well for goodness’ sake. . . . Tell me about it,” 
Arlie urged. She visualized Gracia—taller, buxom, vivid 
—and her thought reached out for all the details Mrs. 
Weaver could give, reached out in avid interest. “Well, 
I’d never have thought that of Gracia!” she said at last 
when Mrs. Weaver paused in the midst of her suppressed 
recital. 

“No one would, Mrs. Shuman. That’s what shocked 
people so. We knew she’d been awfully lively and out 
for a good time and all, but not that! ... I suppose it 
was the war, though. So many girls seemed to go wild 
then.” 

“Yes, I suppose so.” 

“But she’s not wild now, I can tell you. Never pokes 
her head out of the house, and neither does her mother. 
Don’t know over one or two who’s seen the baby. Once 
I heard it cry when I was passing the house. Mrs. 
Wending give up all her church work, as I said. Never 
goes out.” 

“Coon Falls next stop . . . Coon Falls.” Again the 
brakeman. 

“Great heavens, already!” Arlie gasped. 

“Oh, and I meant to tell you, too. I was going to 
write it once. Such a little thing, though. But it was 
a satisfaction to me, all right. Mr. Weaver went out a 
couple of days after the accident, you know”—her voice 
hushed itself. “He’d lost his watch, somehow. Well, 
he found it, and he found that rabbit, too, the one that 
got in front of the car. It musta been run over before 
the accident. Had its head all smashed. It just wasn’t 

[ 397 ] 


anything, he said. I don’t know why, but it did give me 
a heap of satisfaction to know it got what was coming 
to it. As I said, I was going to write, but I just didn’t, 
somehow.” 

“Coon Falls.” 

Arlie stood up and looked at Mrs. Weaver stupidly. 
“The rabbit ... oh, yes.” Then, with no word of good¬ 
bye she blundered down the aisle. 

6 

Phil reached for her suitcase. “Expected you yester¬ 
day anyway. Why didn’t you come? Or when I sent 
the first telegram? Think I’m throwing money away?” 

They crossed the platform to a Ford, into the back 
seat of which Phil tossed the suitcase and went to crank 
the car. 

“I couldn’t come before, Phil,” she explained. “Ed’s 
been sick, you know, with pneumonia.” 

“Oh, has he? Say, that’s tough. Well, if it’s any 
comfort to you, pa wouldn’t have known you, anyway. 
Couldn’t recognize any of us the last few days. 

7 

The coffin rested on its standards in the parlor. She 
could look down at the face for only a moment. His 
hair was even whiter than before; it was of an immac¬ 
ulate frostiness, a frozen and silver light above the dusky 
face with its high features, all blind now, driven beyond 
even the thought of peace and absent from fear. A 
sickly odor of carnations hovered in the vacancy of the 
room, and to the face clung a few specks of powder, flat 
white; it seemed as if the sweetish odor were exhaled 
from the powder. By that odor she was choked, unable 
to cry, and unable also to look longer at that face. She 

[398] 


turned to her mother,* who stood by the door, weeping 
softly. Arlie went to her and kissed her loose cheek. 
Her mother broke out afresh. Arlie stood by, helplessly, 
patting the soft shoulder. “There, there, ma. Don’t 
cry. It’s all for the best. There . . . there. . . 


[399] 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


PROVINCIAL 

I 

On their return from the funeral the house became busy, 
in a subdued way, as they packed. Phil was eager to 
have his mother and the furniture at the farm; and the 
family that was to rent the house was coming on Tues¬ 
day. 

The evening wore on through a great brightness, for 
Phil insisted that a light burn in every room. “Folks’ll 
think we’re having a party or something,” his mother ob¬ 
jected. “Let ’em,” he answered. “But with you and 
the rest of us running everywhere to get something, you 
don’t want to bother with no lights.” 

Arlie found it impossible to be of much service. 
Nothing she did was the right thing for her mother; 
every question was referred to Debbie, who, excited and 
voluble, sorted and folded quilts, blankets, and linen. 
These were to be the furnishings she and Phil had not 
been able to buy when they were married. Now they 
examined chairs, measured carpets, and debated the room 
in the farmhouse and the position in the room each ar¬ 
ticle was to occupy. As they talked thus Mrs. Gelston 
was silent; for silence was part of the price she would 
be paying for a home. When Phil and Debbie went up¬ 
stairs for another carpet she turned to Arlie. “Of course 
the rent’ll give me more’n enough for clothes,” she said. 

[400] 


After I m gone, too, I suppose the house’ll have to go 
to Phil, Arlie. Your pa left it all to me, and I told Phil 
I’d leave it to him. It wouldn’t be more’n right, you 
know, and then”—she bent over the barrel in which she 
was packing china—“Shuman left you some money, any¬ 
way, and I don’t suppose they’d ever see you in want, 
even if you did marry again.” 

“I know, ma. That’s all right. I’ll always be able to 
take care of myself.” 

Her mother said no more for a time, and Arlie with¬ 
drew to the contemplation of what had made the funeral 
so irrelevant and absurd. Her father had died, she felt, 
when she had left him on that July afternoon in the pre¬ 
vious summer. He had been lying in his coffin in the 
parlor ever since, waiting for any accidental day on which 
to be buried. She had happened to come home on that 
day. 

At last she went upstairs to her own room. The mir¬ 
ror had been taken from the body of the dresser and 
leaned against the wall, slanting the room awry; the scrim 
curtains were gone; the carpet was rolled; one chair re¬ 
mained. Only the wallpaper and the dim brown bed 
were as before. 

While Phil and Debbie and her mother worked on she 
lay wakeful. It was the last night in the old house, in 
this her room, and the bed. ... It was in this bed that 
Gerald had been born, and here she had been married to 
Herb. On many a dreaming night she had lain here 
(had it really been she, or somebody else?), longing for 
a sight of Herb again; had flailed at her body, when she 
had been pregnant, in moments of blind fear, when she 
had shrunk from the town and its moving circle of hos¬ 
tile faces, faces of those who had laughed, sneered, and 
snouted into her life, faces eager with talk. They would 
always talk, just as Mrs. Weaver had about that poor 
little Gracia Wentling. 


[401] 


She sat up with a shock. Talk? She had talked her¬ 
self, and about Gracia, pressing from Mrs, Weaver all 
the possible details. And at the time, on the train, she 
had even felt a repulsed avidity, a sickening greed for 
more and more. 

Exactly what did it mean? Arlie Gelston and Gracia 
Wentling—what was the real difference between them? 
She had deserted each—had Arlie Somers. And Arlie 
Somers was so very definitely a third person. Gracia 
Wentling and the old Arlie were closer to being one 
than were Arlie Somers and Arlie Gelston. She, who¬ 
ever she was, was driven into a new and barren region 
where there was no home. . . . Confusion faded into a 
tense vacancy. She burrowed into the old bed, as if in 
its warm encompassing she might find an answer; she 
waited, but none came. The others went to bed at last, 
the lights were all out, the house was dark. Alone she 
was wakeful, staring as if to discover with widened eyes 
what lay concealed in the obscurity; but what was there 
was not to be revealed, if indeed it existed at all. That 
much, after deepening hours, was harrowingly clear, 
though still, alternately restless and stone silent, she 
gazed with straining unfocussed eyes into the darkness; 
and over her the silence and ancientry of night persisted. 
“I don’t know enough to think about it,” she whispered 
at last. “I don’t know how; oh, I don’t. . . 

In the morning, though the trouble of the night had not 
vanished nor been solved, it had, with the gray coming of 
light, receded so that momentarily she could treat it as 
something to be laughed out when the day should be 
stronger. It had to fade with daylight, with the open 
brilliance of the sun; and she watched the low clouds 
hopefully—less hopefully as the morning widened to a 
noon of gray sky, dull light. 

She realized then what all morning should have been 
apparent, that Debbie, Phil, her mother, expected her to 

[402] 


take the afternoon train. She had no reason for stay¬ 
ing, she told herself, yet she was not ready to go—despite 
all the subtle presences of the group and even of the 
old house which were compelling her to go. If it had 
only been summer she would have walked until she found 
what she wanted to do; but it was winter, and the house 
was too full. 

Hence train time found her buying a ticket not for 
Grand Forks but for Des Moines, and not so much be¬ 
cause she wanted to carry out her plan of seeing Mat as 
that she did not want, yet, to return to Grand Forks and 
Ed. When she had written her note she had intended 
to go to Des Moines. Now, immersed in her inability 
to plan anew, and in the absence of fresh impulse, the 
memory of the old commanded her. 

Mat met her at the station, and when they had eaten 
dinner he took her in a taxicab to his rooms. So far she 
had been acquiescent, their talk had been trivial, and 
though Mat’s question at last, “Shall we go to the rooms 
now?” had been critically eager, her reply had been, if 
a little unexpected by him, still very quiet: “If your 
rooms are some place where a person can rest and think 
a little, yes.” 

The street along which the taxicab sped was dingy with 
smoke-colored snow, but before they reached the apart¬ 
ments it had taken on a thin cover of freshly fallen 
white. Outside the door their feet marked the sidewalk 
with shadows. There was a lonely concrete staircase, a 
corridor, and then the welcome of the already lighted 
rooms. Since the lights had been left on Mat must have 
been very sure of her coming, she thought as she gave 
her coat into his hands and let him draw her galoshes 
from her feet. As he fumbled with the buckles she 

[ 403 ] 


glanced about. Through one door ajar she glimpsed 
white tile and towels. A third door, probably to the bed¬ 
room, was closed. Strange, to penetrate so far into 
Mat’s life, and to note the influence of her impending 
arrival in the order of the magazines on the table, the 
well cleaned ash-tray under the green-glassed mission 
lamp, the carefully closed box of stogies. It was from 
the very table by which she sat that he must have written 
her. 

‘‘There,” he said, “are you comfortable now?” 

“Perfectly.” 

“Probably pretty well tired, aren’t you?” 

“Not so much as you’d think. Sit down, Mat—no, 
over there. And smoke up. It’ll be easier for you.” 

“Easier, how do you mean?” 

“I don’t quite know yet.” 

His hand trembled as he held the match flame to his 
cigarette. Calmly she watched it. He was trying so 
hard to appear usual, but his movements were only a 
compromise between overeagerness and fear. His atti¬ 
tude inflected hers, she was not so sure of herself now, 
and if she lost what assurance she had, she could fall 
back only on confusion. Tense again, she attempted to 
think toward clearness, until her thoughts swirled and 
went out, leaving her vacantly yet solidly before him. 
An alarm clock somewhere ticked on, and silence grew 
heavy about them, enveloping them in closer community. 
If it became closer, its invisible pulsations uniting them, 
she might not be able to control it as she wanted. Words 
must break it. Anything: “Well, it’s apparent you got 
my note all right?” (But she had said that before.) 

“Yep.” 

“But you know, in a way I’m sorry I mailed that note, 
or wrote it at all, since I didn’t write more.” 

“Why so ?” 

“Well ... we haven’t had much to say since we got 

[404] 


here, have we? We just kept still, and the stillness, it 
got to meaning things it shouldn’t of. And I don’t 
blame you—or it, I guess I mean. It’s this way: the note 
only told you to meet me, didn’t it? and you did, and 
we didn’t have much to say during dinner, and then you 
said should we go to the rooms. And here we are. 
Then—well—naturally you’d feel, with neither of us say¬ 
ing anything, that pretty soon it’d break, and we’d—be 
together somehow, didn’t you?” 

“Well, naturally I expected something, since you put it 
that way.” 

“Yes, and I’m sorry it got going, because—this is what 
I’m trying to say: it’s just that all the time now, right 
this minute, we’re getting farther apart, and it’s hard to 
tell you, but I don’t want you to be thinking anything 
else, even if I have given you reasons for thinking other¬ 
wise. It’s . . 

The silence descended on them again. With lowered 
face Mat eyed the eddying smoke of his cigarette. 

“It’s—don’t you see, Mat? If I hadn’t come out here 
it’d been hard talking to you in a restaurant or station 
somewheres. And then I wanted to come, to come all 
the way, to be here alone with you, just to show you I 
wasn’t afraid—no, not that exactly; there’s nothing to be 
afraid of, I suppose—but to make you understand that I 
mean what I’m going to say, or rather that I mean what 
I’m going to do, because I’m not sure I can say much 
more.” 

“What is it you mean to do?” 

“I’m going back to Ed on the eleven o’clock train.” 

“You’re going back to Ed! Why, you just come from 
him.” 

“I know, and I’m going back. I can’t tell you just 
why. You see, I been thinking I was one person all 
along, and really I been getting to be somebody else. 
I’ve gone back on what I used to be, and on another kid 

[405] 


too. I—I didn’t think I had it in me to, but something 
the other day—on the train it was—showed me; and to 
stay here with you would just muddle me up so I wouldn’t 
be anybody. I’d—” 

“Arlie, what’s the hell’s the matter with you? You 
talk like you were crazy!” 

“I know, maybe I am. All the same ...” A per¬ 
verse laughter was coming from inexplicable sources. 
“All the same”—and as the laughter came Mat stood and 
was by her chair, putting his arm about her shoulder. 

“Look here, kid, this is no laughing matter for either 
of us. You came to me and you’re going to stay with 
me. You’re going to be here all night, and tomorrow 
night, and every day and night, and right away we’ll be 
in Chicago—I can work out of there now if I want to—• 
and you’re no more going back to Grand Forks than 
you’re going to the moon. Hear me?” 

“I hear you all right,” she answered, “but it won’t do 
any good now. I knew I couldn’t explain to you when 
I can’t to myself. That’s the trouble. I just come up 
against a stone wall every time I try, and I don’t know 
enough to find a way around, or to climb over it. It’s 
too much for my brain. I came here just to have it out 
with you for good and all. I wanted to be finished with 
it.” 

“But there’s just one way, Arlie; we care too much; 
you know that as well as I do.” 

“I don’t believe I know anything as well as you do— 
or as well as any one does.” She broke away from his 
releasing arms and went to the window. Hesitantly he 
followed. “No, keep away,” she said, and he retreated. 
Her coming had been no good, she thought; there was no 
clear way out. Herb, Ed, Mat—she hadn’t succeeded 
with any; nor had they with her. Nor had she with her¬ 
self. 

Tilting back the drawn curtain she looked out. The 

[406] 


light was soft and dim; she could feel rather than see the 
snow still falling through the gray glimmering. The 
streets were full of snow, and full of night. A girl was 
passing on the opposite sidewalk, her shoulders hunched 
forward; she cut across the corner under the light. Go¬ 
ing somewhere. If only she were like that girl, with 
somewhere to go, to go clearly and with confidence. . . . 
She let the curtain fall into place. 

Mat still stood irresolute, his hand on the table, a 
stubby hand with flattened fingers, the fingers that had 
touched her. The hand was alone under the light. The 
light glowed upon its yellow flexible pallor. There was 
nothing in the world but the yellow hand that had touched 
her. Touched Arlie Somers, not Arlie Gelston—who 
dwelt in years long gone and closed. Gracia lived in 
those years also, with a friend Arlie. 

If those years should break, letting the confusion flow 
out to engulf this later self, then the three of them could 
be together, companionable because they would be out¬ 
side what Arlie Somers was within, talking like the rest, 
acting like the rest—Mrs. Weaver, Mrs. Holcomb. . . . 
But there was no way of becoming like Gracia. Mrs. 
Weaver and Mrs. Holcomb were not concerned; it was 
for Arlie Somers only to reduce herself, to know, by 
some later change, that she was with Gracia and Arlie 
Gelston. What did Iowa care that she had suffered 
through the night, and would again, because she had 
talked as she had to Mrs. Weaver? There was nothing 
to tell anybody else, only something to tell herself, if at 
last she could. 

But she could not do again what once she had done. 
She had loved Herb with blinded eyes, she had been ut¬ 
terly his own, blurring into him. That had not been re¬ 
peated with Ed, nor could it be with Mat, who lived 
always, in the closest moments they had shared, apart 
and even remote. And there was no one else to love. 

[407] 


Ed, who here could mean nothing, and Mat . . . Mat! 
Could she, through Mat, who was too remote to love, who 
left her always coldly outlined, only remembering—could 
she, by him, because he would be a gross insistence and 
a repulsive pain, reduce herself from arrogance to what 
she had been? His hand lay on the table, the light lay 
on the hand, the light immobile, the hand alive. Draw¬ 
ing her toward it, the hand; not knowing she moved, 
closer, closer. The hand was gone, Mat fronted her, her 
own hands were on his shoulders, his fingers on her 
arms; their warmth stirred memory of seclusion—and of 
small minutes that within were heavily vast as their mys¬ 
terious work was done. Closer to her own came his hot 
body, and against him in the darkness she was aware of 
each subtle and huge change of their union. Suddenly 
she was passionate and savage as she felt his thighs 
tremble, and for a towering moment was pliant to him. 

Then, gaining each widening instant of separation by 
tearing him vitally from her, she pressed him back, and 
the arm with which she had levered him away she held 
in front of her, defensively, as she retreated to a chair. 
Her arm, still a few inches from her head, in a moment 
dropped. Breathing rapidly she let go into a profound 
exhaustion, and the green half-light of the room glim¬ 
mered through her closed eyes. 

She heard him advancing toward her again, and knew 
she wanted him to come; but because she wanted him she 
feared. Upward in the malign green depth, darkening 
with menace, she felt the overwhelming of remote and 
brainless cause—Grendel again. If only Mat were com¬ 
pelled upon her by that shapelessness, then, at last, she 
could accept and use him, letting him take her as he 
would, in what would be to her a torture resolving in 
pain her disharmony. Even though Grendel persisted, 
she would be herself again. But because she wanted 
him not altogether in pain she was held where she had 

[408] 


been. Not Mat was compelled but her own desire, so 
that forever she would fear, and be torn apart before 
that fear; or else, wanting him and yielding, sink into 
extinction. 

He was moving again— 

“Don’t!” she cried, and raised her arm as if to ward 
him off. “Wait—a minute anyway. Not yet.” She had 
been speaking through darkness. When her eyes opened 
on the room she found him watching her in resolute stu¬ 
pidity. “I . . she began. 

“You act like I’s going to hit you,” he said resentfully. 
“What is it? I didn’t hurt you, did I?” 

“No, you didn’t hurt me. It was just myself. Let 
me rest a minute . . . and don’t talk.” 

The alarm clock ticked on through the silence. The 
clock must be on the table somewhere; on a shelf at the 
other end. Was it late? They hadn’t left the restau¬ 
rant until eight-thirty, it had taken a little while to ride 
out, and they had been here—she didn’t know how long: 
maybe only a few minutes, but the time seemed hours. 
Shortly she must move again, put on her things, some¬ 
how get out and down to the station. That would in¬ 
volve keeping Mat where he was, staving him off until 
she could be away. 

“But Arlie—” He was beginning again. “I don’t 
understand. Here you come to me and I know you love 
me, and I do you. I always have. Yet you act like 
something was the matter, instead of everything being all 
right.” 

She roused to meet this, to comprehend it; then: 
“Yes, but the point is I don't love you, not really. I’ve 
just tried to think I did. All I done is to fool myself 
because there didn’t seem to be anything else left. Then 
you made me want you and ... if I didn’t want you, 
you could get me, and somehow I could set things straight 
with myself. But now I know I want you, I can t. It d 

[409] 


just always be to me I hadn’t anything else to go on. 
And there wouldn’t be any risk about it. Not any more 
for me there wouldn’t. I have to go just like I was 
when I come here—as long as I’m anything at all. And, 
O Mat, don’t—don’t pester me with yourself. It’s all I 
can do all alone, without you worrying me.” 

“Why, I wouldn’t worry you. Honest I wouldn’t, 
only—” 

“Only you just can’t keep from it, can you?” Her 
tone was sharp. Convulsively she sat up in her chair 
and toward him. “You think just about your own 
damn’ self all the time, and keep at me and at me. I’d 
think you could see by this time I ain’t what you think, 
that I ain’t going to do what you want. I have enough 
trouble alone, I tell you, without you.” 

“But Arlie, I’m not keeping at you. It’s only I’m try¬ 
ing to understand all this wild talk you been putting on 
and your acting the way you have. How the deuce you 
expect me to understand, when all the time I been think¬ 
ing—” He was edging his chair closer. 

“Stop it!” she cried. 

“But—” 

“Oh damn you, damn you, God damn you—I hate you 
so, I hate you!” She was on her feet by his chair, look¬ 
ing down at the bewilderment of his face; then toward 
that face her hand swung viciously, the blow muffed by 
his jerking arm. Yet she had reached him; the white 
mark on his face, reddening as he looked at her, clutch¬ 
ing the hand which had struck him, told her that. 

“Mat . . . oh, I didn’t mean to. Forgive me. I don’t 
know what’s wrong with me.” 

“I guess you don’t, Arlie. I ... I never expected 
anything like that from you.” 

He was still clutching her wrist, but as the grasp 
relaxed she withdrew. “It’s time for me to go, all right,” 

[410] 


she said. “There’s no use staying. There’s nothing we 
can do.” 

“There’d be a lot, Arlie, if you’d listen to me. I didn’t 
mean to push things. It was more your walking over 
to me than anything else. I know it’d take time, prob¬ 
ably, but why not take it? You could go on to Chicago 
and wait for me. I could be there for good in a couple 
of weeks; and even then, if you weren’t ready, why we 
could chum around until you were. Afterwards things 
could be arranged with Ed, and not too much publicity 
either. What little there was wouldn’t matter; we’d be 
away from everybody we’d known, mostly. ... I never 
talked to you much about money. Not at all I ain’t, but 
I’m making six thousand a year, and—” 

“Don’t, Mat. It’s no good. You know it ain’t. I’m 
sorry I hit at you but it’s done and I can’t undo it and 
I can’t go to Chicago with you. All the farther I can 
go is to the station with you—tonight. And I wish 
you’d go and order a taxi now.” 

If he would go—for only a few minutes—in the lone¬ 
liness of the room she could get together again, enough to 
face people at least. 

“You just wait a bit,” he broke in, “before we get 
any taxi. There’s plenty time yet.” 

“Of course I can go on a street car. It’s only that I 
didn’t know where to get one in this part of town. And 
I was going to pay for the taxi myself, so you needn’t 
worry about that.” 

“Now look here, girl, you know I’m not as cheap as 
that. I’ve never been quite that bad, have I ? T hen 
why d’you say anything like that?” 

She shouldn’t have said it. The same impulse that had 
struck the blow had spoken the words. For some rea¬ 
son she had wanted to hurt him. To have him wince 
small healing in her, yet not one that lasted. 

[4ii] 


was a 


After all, there had always been kindness in Mat. “It 
was . . she began. “I only thought that—well, since 
I was going to use it to leave you, it’d be rubbing it in 
to have you pay for it. . . . And I’m too tired out not 
to take it. I didn’t tell you, but the reason I was in 
Coon Falls was because my father was buried yesterday. 
I was coming back from his funeral, and . . . it’s all too 
much.” 

“Why, you poor kid!” He rose and started toward 
her—then checked himself. “Why didn’t you tell me be¬ 
fore? How could I know? You make me feel like a 
damn’ mut. I wouldn’t of brought you out here if I’d 
known that.” 

“That was all right. I was willing to come, like I 
told you before. I needed somewhere to rest a little. 
It’d been all right if we hadn’t got started.” 

“I didn’t realize, not for one second, Arlie. I’d never 
of gone on so.” 

“But it’s all right, I tell you.” She couldn’t keep the 
tinge of impatience out of her words. “If you’d just go 
now and order the taxi.” 

“No need of going out. I can order it here.” He 
pointed to the telephone on the wall. 

Wasn’t she going to gain the few minutes alone? “I 
hadn’t noticed,” she said. “But Mat, you go out and 
order it anyway. It’d rest me just to be alone a little. 
Please.” 

“Sure thing. I’ll go right away.” Energetically he 
put on his coat, and with a wistful look back at her was 
gone. 

Why had she used her father’s death for such a pur¬ 
pose? The funeral hadn’t tired her. Her father had 
been dead since last July. It was only being herself that 
had tired her. But she had needed to be alone, yes, even 
at the expense of so dim a disloyalty to her father. He 
wouldn’t care; he had always loved her, and she him. 

[412] 


He would be wholly willing, if he knew, that she use him 
so. His love was so great that her action would be lost 
in it. Or had his love been only for Arlie Gelston? Yet 
that afternoon when she had talked with him, surely it 
had been Arlie Somers who had sat by his bed. He 
would love both of her, and if he were alive perhaps he 
could heal this division in her, or at least give her some¬ 
thing else to think about until its pain faded. It would 
fade. After years it would, because whatever it was 
you felt with dried up, went out. She could never again 
love anybody as she had loved Herb. Even with Ed it 
had been different. Perhaps it was this that made her 
unable really to love Mat. If she had loved him she 
would have wanted to love him with the help of Ed, to 
talk him over with Ed, who was so much a part of 
her, really . . . Arlie Somers. She’d be going back to 
him when Mat came with the taxicab. If so, she must 
be getting her hat on, her galoshes, her coat. 

She buckled her galoshes first—it would be better to 
have that done—and as she did so glanced again at the 
table with its neat pile of magazines; piled so, she was 
sure, because of her coming. When she had her things 
all on she must disarrange that pile, so that it would not 
be a reminder to Mat. 

But when she had done so, standing by the table in 
ner coat and hat, Mat had still not come. She went to 
the window. He might already be below with the taxi. 
The street was empty of all but unchanging light, and 
through it the snow fell, leisurely descending, lifting and 
falling, touching the window pane. 

Then Mat’s steps quickened along the corridor, he 
paused in front of the door, and she turned to face him. 

“Oh, you’re ready?” he said. 

“Yes—did you order it?” 

He hesitated before answering. “I been walking 
around in the snow, trying to see a way through, so it’d 

[413] 


be settled somehow. . . . No, I didn’t order it. I 
thought I could from here anyway. You still want it?” 

“I—I got to go somehow.” 

“All right then. It’s for you to say. ... It always 
has been, Arlie,” he added softly, and took the receiver 
from the hook. Watching him as he gave the address 
she understood how his former assurance had b^en, all 
along, only the emphasis of his need for her. 

i 

3 

“Looks like it’d stopped snowing,” Mat said when they 
had settled themselves in the taxicab, which was drawing 
away from the apartments. Arlie glanced out. Yes, a 
suggestion of moonlight lay behind paling clouds, but 
here were more flakes on the glass. “Not yet, I guess,” 
she answered, and reclining again was surprised to find 
sobs gathering in her throat. Mat was silent in his cor¬ 
ner ; she wanted to throw herself across the little distance 
separating them and cry in his arms, be comforted there, 
and tell him all there was to be told. If only that could 
be done! But it couldn’t. She wouldn’t be able to ex¬ 
plain, Mat wouldn’t understand, and would think she 
wanted him again. 

They were on Walnut Street already. People hurried, 
street cars clamored, the advancing automobiles combed 
the white street with pale gold. Then they had turned 
and were passing the courthouse, a huge smoky mass 
vanishing into the night. 

The station was packed with outgoing people. Hardly 
could they find a place for her to sit while Mat purchased 
her ticket. She had tried to refuse to let him, wanting 
for herself the occupation of waiting in the long line. 
But nervous and abrupt he had insisted, and after a little 
argument she had given in. 

There was more argument when he tried to pay for it, 

[414] 


returning to her with the ticket and bill she had pressed 
on him. “Since you’re going,” he had said, nettled, “you 
might as well let me speed you along that much. It’d 
be something for Ed.” 

Until he had said that she had prolonged the argument 
artificially, even gayly, feeling it was easier to talk so 
than to find other indifferent matters. “Take it,” she 
snapped, “and keep the change.” 

But the change he carefully counted, down to the last 
penny, and pressed it into her palm. Latching her purse 
she sat silent by his side, watching the crowds and hear¬ 
ing the trains called. There was still some time to wait, 
and that time was not going to be easy, she realized, if 
they continued thus. At last, sharply, she sent him off 
to look up the train again and in his absence bought a 
magazine at the news-stand. On his return they chatted 
trivially, of his probable move to Chicago, of the winter, 
but chiefly of the pictures they had seen; and relapsed 
into a long silence broken only when the train caller took 
up his lugubrious chant, from whose intoned obscur¬ 
ity the name “Grand Forks” clearly emerged. She 
started. 

“There it is, Mat.” 

Silence held them a moment longer. Bound in that 
silence neither moved. Then both stood up, and as they 
entered the crowd funnelling through the gates he grasped 
her arm. On the cold outer platform she looked at him, 
but in the misted light she could see little; his face was 
shadowed by his hat. The engine gleamed and thundered 
past, and confused by the uproar she gave back, to be 
supported by strength and to have her arm grasped the 
tighter. She had not known he was so strong. 

Slowly they followed the streaming line of overcoats 
and traveling-bags, to come at last to the dim outskirts 
of the blind mass seeking entrance to the train. 

“Give me my suitcase now, Mat.” She turned to him 

[ 415 ] 


and reached out her hand. His grasp on her arm re¬ 
laxed, he touched her shoulder. 

“I—I’ll see you on all right,” he said. 

“No, don’t. I want to go alone ... I have to.” 

“Yes?” 

It was a dumb moment. She knew only that he was 
near and that she was going. “Mat,” she whispered, 
“Mat, kiss me good-bye.” That would be safe now, and 
would make up for her striking him. She pressed closer, 
her hands on his coat collar. For a shadowing long in¬ 
stant he was nearer than he had ever been, yet they were 
apart. Then he had wrenched away and her face was 
lifted in surprise not to him but to the shock of empty 
light, down which the snow crowded from an indistin¬ 
guishable sky. 

Late-comers caught her into the warming drift of peo¬ 
ple, and suitcase in hand she was pushed and almost lifted 
up the steps into the vestibule. Down the long aisle 
she hurried to the very back of the car. After the cold 
outer air the closeness of the train oppressed her; yet it 
was good to be with many people again, and going some¬ 
where. She worked at the plush chair until it snapped 
back to a comfortable angle, hoisted her suitcase to the 
rack overhead, and reclining into her coat gathered it 
around her. It would have been a waste of money to 
take a Pullman—what with the change and wait she 
would have to make at the junction. She would be very 
comfortable as she was. . . . And Mat had been right 
to go that way, refusing what she had so cheaply offered. 
It was just another place in which she had been askew. 
If there were time she would get off and tell him, but 
there wasn’t— 

The train was moving, past the shining and silent 
streets, past the close and ponderous silence of unpeopled 
buildings, past lonelier and dimmer streets, away from 
the city into the fields. Had it stopped snowing? The 

[416] 


moon would be breaking those clouds. . . . There was 
too much to think about, and there was no answer any¬ 
way. But Mat—he might come back to Grand Forks 
again, having waited until she had forgotten about her 
father’s death. With no excuse he would be harder to 
deal with then. But she’d have to take the future when 
it came, and Ed’s future with hers—even if it didn’t lead 
beyond the Isis and never to that chain of movie palaces 
he talked about—creamy stone, glittering with electric 
designs, and inside, in the perfumed twilight, the marvel 
of the flying dream. Only the Isis with its dingied 
stucco, the pictures on the walls, and old and rainy films. 
But if Mat came insistently, she could be cruel again. 
It would be more satisfying, next time, to be cruel. 

The lamps were out in the car, all but two. Suspended 
over the clicking rails she was being rushed on, past the 
unillumined farmhouses and the fields in their massive 
width and hush. On and down—with towns curving into 
the night behind as the train drove into air that was 
brightening. On and down—she had an inescapable 
sense now that the train was going down an incredibly 
long hill to Grand Forks. She opened her eyes to cor¬ 
rect that—yes, level enough—but as she closed them the 
track dipped again. 

It didn’t seem possible, here in the train, that for a 
blind savage moment she had wanted Mat. If she had 
not been perversely compelled to want him, then this elu¬ 
sive pain of division would not yet be with her. She 
might have lost one pain within another. Or was this 
the price of not being utterly submissive to that pro¬ 
found compulsion? Only so could she stay herself, 
struggling, above extinction? Unless after years it went 
out, she with it—leaving Gerald. Drawing her coat 
closer she turned on her side. The unfolded collar shut 
off all light from the car. The flying air outside was 
brightening, but not enough to trouble. She might sleep. 

[ 417 ] 


In the semi-darkness her eyes were held shut by the 
weight of their weariness. . . . But when the strong 
moon broke the clouds at last and the fields knew for an 
hour the quiet flood, she was lifted into a sourceless cold 
brilliance. With the hour, with morning, it would dis¬ 
integrate into separate and innumerable molds. Pro¬ 
vincial by its own necessity it would shape itself into 
grotesque form and place. But Arlie, sleeping in release 
from Des Moines and the Isis, was aware only of her 
wide and vacant dream. 


4 

The outer staircase to their rooms was gray as ever as 
she climbed it in the morning. It couldn’t have snowed 
in Grand Forks. Already the milkman had left the tall 
white bottles with their sloping shoulders, and Gerald’s 
* sled, with its bright runners, leaned against the railing. 
She stood in the hall before their own door. Ed would 
not be up yet, she thought, and then she heard him move. 

“Why, Arlie!” he exclaimed as she stood before 
him. “Say, I didn’t expect you so soon!” 

“Are you glad to see me back, Ed?” 

“You know damn’ well I am.” His hair, a duller yel¬ 
low since his sickness—though she had not recognized 
the change before—was furiously rumpled. He needed 
to shave again, but not so badly as when she had left him 
at the Isis. 

“Say, you know, Arlie, I’m awful sorry about your 
father—and the way I acted, too. . . . He was a fine old 
fellow. I’ll always remember him.” 

“Yes, but I suppose it’s better that way, Ed. He suf¬ 
fered so. . . . Is Gerald all right?” 

“Sure; he was in just a minute ago. Staid with Gelke 
last night and she’s making waffles for him. Shall I call 
him?” He moved toward the door, and when she an- 

[418] 


swered, “No, let him eat,” came back to her. “You don’t 
know how lonely I got, Arlie,” he said. She withdrew 
from his arms and sat down. 

It was the same room, with all the familiarities the 
years had given. Ed had seated himself at the table by 
his empty breakfast dishes and a pile of exhibitors’ jour¬ 
nals. “And the Isis, is that all right, Ed?” 

His eyes avoided her as he answered. “Yes, the Isis 
is all right. I don’t know but you did the best thing 
after all—though maybe it ain’t making as much money 
as you thought.” 

“No . . . ?” 

“The books wasn’t quite right, I found. You’d for¬ 
got the insurance. But it’ll keep us going; and if I do 
the projecting why we’ll get along fine. You see, the 
whole picture business is shaky, it strikes me. Likely 
to flame up any time. If it does, why I can tinker 
watches again, I suppose; only I’m getting more in¬ 
terested in the projection end. It ain’t never been 
worked right. Why, with only what I know now I 
showed Johnson a thing or two last night that give us 
pictures almost like we used to run, and if only I can 
project myself and we can save money, why . . His 
hand went to his hair again. 

“Well, that’s fine, Ed, that’s fine.” She would have to 
lie down, she was very tired. “Anyway,” she continued, 
“we’ll always have ourselves, won’t we?” 

For a moment they looked at each other, and neither 
gaze was steady. Rising, she crossed the room and stood 
beside him. His head was bent. She touched his shoul¬ 
der, and when he looked up at her she took his face be¬ 
tween her hands and looked as deeply as she could into 
his eyes. “Ed . . .” Her voice was unsteady, as her 
gaze had been. He did not speak, and his mute eyes 
gave no answer to the searching of her own. Ed, she 
repeated, and he turned to kiss her hand. 

[ 419 ] 


Wearily she took her suitcase to the bedroom and be¬ 
gan to unpack. Ed had not moved from the table. 
Then a noise filled the hall, a door slammed, and Gerald 
went down the outer stairs with his sled. He shouldn’t 
do that. It was Sunday. 


THE END 


[420] 


















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